albums pitched as 'edgy' or 'dark' that were only edgy or dark in relation to the rest of the artist's catalogue

example: Helloween put out an album called "The Dark Ride" which was billed as a darker, bleaker version of their core sound, but as a hilarious metal-archives poster put it, it's as dark as 'a fuckin' sunset', it's basically the same sound only with minor keys used more often.

Hammer's The Funky Headhunter was supposed to be a much more hardcore rap album and featured some actual profanity (!!!) and had good songs on it but wasn't exactly hard-edged compared to other albums in the genre.

Donny Osmond's 1989 s/t album. nuff said....

always amuses me when people reinvent themselves in this way and it comes across as cringe and forced

Run DMC- Back From Hell ("The album is notable for adopting more of a street attitude than their previous albums as well as using more curse words.")

It would have been funny if "You Want It Darker" was one of these

Prince "The Black Album" yeah?

I think Motley Crue's self titled album (1994)--the one after Vince Neil left--was pitched as darker and grungier. I remember the band getting angry in an MTV interview when asked about make-up and glam metal.

mariah carey's "chick" project

Never heard it, but according to reviews at the time Not Com.mercial by Cher, featuring her attacks on the Catholic church.

Ultraphobic saw Warrant acknowledging the grunge phenomenon with a record that openly admitted to a Seattle influence, although it was still a natural progression from the hard edged Dog Eat Dog.[6] It is vaguely similar to Danger Danger's Dawn, which was also released in 1995. In particular, the record represented an experimentation with the grunge sounds which had by this time become popular, and which, ironically, had contributed to the band's commercial demise. In songs such as "Undertow" and "Followed", the band attempted to mix pop metal sounds with the alternative stylings of Seattle bands such as Alice in Chains and Soundgarden.

I have a suspicion that at least 50% of hair metal bands had one of these records in the early-to-mid 90s

Vanilla Ice: Hard to Swallow (1998)

Depeche Mode’s Ultra

De La Soul’s Stakes Is High

LL Cool J - 14 Shots to the Dome

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b9/14_Shots_to_the_Dome_-_LL_Cool_J.jpg

almost every 80s rapper has one or two of these in the early 90s

Reputation/Reputation (Taylor's Version)

The Osmonds’ Crazy Horses although some people (eg Chuck Eddy) think it’s a genuinely good album.

Nebraska?

Kiss - The Elder

For Kiss I think it's more "Psycho Circus"

The hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse took issue with the album, feeling it copied their style. The American rapper Violent J referenced this in their song "Everybody Rize" by rapping 'Fuck Gene Simmons you make me sick, psycho circus you stole my shit! Spit your blood out and do your dance but I'ma kick that ass through your leather pants.'

Another Kiss one is Creatures of The Night, which was pitched as their return to Hard Rock/Heavy Metal.

Madness : The Rise And Fall.

after 3 albums of their Nutty Boy thing (even though Seven had some seriously dark vibes/lyrics),
they definitely added a darker side on this album.

The LL Cool J one is a great suggestion. Such a weird album. He always strove for pop success, but it’s a really alienating work

Van Halen's Fair Warning sounds as if the band were trying, a little bit, to copy the nascent hardcore punk scene. It came out the same years as Damaged and Minor Threat's first two EPs. But that might be complete coincidence and they didn't stay dark for very long.

Probably the most successful version of this was Judas Priest's Painkiller. They were like, "Oh, you kids like this thrash music? How about this?"

does michael jackson's 'bad' qualify here. I was like four when it came out

half of 14 Shots is really good, and the run of three Bobcat-produced tracks at the end feels like the most conscious album-sequencing in his catalogue

Van Halen's Fair Warning sounds as if the band were trying, a little bit, to copy the nascent hardcore punk scene. It came out the same years as Damaged and Minor Threat's first two EPs. But that might be complete coincidence and they didn't stay dark for very long.

David Lee Roth was very aware of the L.A. punk scene; I believe he was the part-owner of an art gallery that showed Raymond Pettibon's drawings. And later, Henry Rollins helped edit Roth's legendary autobiography. So it's a possibility...

I'd be willing to bet the biggest influence on Bad was Prince, and maybe that's an obvious influence that's been cited many times, idk I haven't read up on it, it just really feels like an attempt at following in his footsteps a bit. It's a good pic for this thread.

*pick

would Madonna's "Like a Prayer" qualify?

Depeche Mode’s Ultra

I think This Is Harcore counts as one of these

Wasn't Paul Simon's Songs from The Capeman criticized for incongruous swearing that sounded absurd with him singing it?

Though perhaps Paul Simon's real "dark" album came out in 1983, a pioneering work of grindcore-level gore:

You take two bodies and you twirl them into one
Their hearts and their bones, and they won't come undone

You can see why he didn't want Garfunkel harmonizing on that one.

Hello entrails my old friend
I came to bathe in you again

Their Satanic Majesties Request
Automatic for the People
Dazzle Ships
The White Album

I think the right Vanilla Ice record for this exercise is Mind Blowin'

Depeche Mode’s Ultra

make the case that this one stood out?

It is dark, but I wonder if the well-known backstory contributes to this impression as much as the music and lyrics.

xxxpost Just trying to keep the coroner satisfied

I'm thinking perhaps the final NKOTB album, whatever that's like

I'd be willing to bet the biggest influence on Bad was Prince, and maybe that's an obvious influence that's been cited many times, idk I haven't read up on it, it just really feels like an attempt at following in his footsteps a bit. It's a good pic for this thread.

― omar little

mj wanted prince on it, the two of them trading smack talk with each other

prince declined, suggesting that the line "your ass is mine" sounded kinda gay

mind you in '83 when they were both at on stage at that james brown concert mj clearly came out ahead, so i wouldn't blame prince for not wanting to get into a situation like that in '87

Bangerz

xpost I'm sorry but the line is "Your butt is mine"--much less gay!

oh yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5OY_H2_rQ8

xp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XT-9Hfwkolc

Isn't almost every follow up to a Britpop blockbuster like this, post 1996

Wow how did I live this long without knowing that New Kids on the Block had a video where they chase a woman through the woods with pitbulls while wearing skimasks?

I've never heard the Chris Gaines album, but I imagine it's one of these based on the album cover

Bangerz

I was thinking Can't Be Tamed would also qualify.

Would NSYNC's Celebrity count? Where they tried to make "Dirty Pop" a thing.

The Cars - Panorama

https://i.discogs.com/Sbb9eSDgVkV0bCByg10_pFmJkW06vYqm2KJOT6zikmQ/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:400/w:399/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTIxOTE2/MjktMTI5MTc3NTQy/MS5qcGVn.jpeg

omg lol at that cover

Prince was worried about being thought of as gay????!!!!

I guess In Utero is too obvious

Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope

Talking Heads’ Naked

Seal's flop third album Human Being

Wouldn't another Van Halen one be For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge - an album promising to be genuinely badass from the name alone (except it isn't)

I though Balance was supposed to be Van Hagar’s darker one

Prince was worried about being thought of as gay????!!!!

― Bad Bairns (Boring, Maryland), Friday, July 12, 2024 2:57 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

well, gay for Michael Jackson at least

xp Maybe? I trust anyone more than myself on this. But I thought FUCK presented as a back-to-business-remember-we-ROCK move

Dexys - Don't Stand Me Down
Moby - Animal Rights
Smashing Pumpkins - Adore
Travis - 12 Memories
Tranvision Vamp - Little Magnets Versus The Bubble of Babble
Madonna - Erotica and American Life
Kylie - Impossible Princess[
Blink-182 self-titled
Red Hot Chili Peppers - One Hot Minute
Green Day - Insomniac
Blue Oyster Cult - Cultösaurus Erectus

FYI I'm kinda ignoring the precise premise of the title and just focusing on 'When x artist made a 'darker/'edgy' album, probably one I enjoy a lot', as per the mentions of the White Album, This Is Hardcore, Dazzle Ships, Satanic Majesties, Automatic and others

this was Van Halen's 'dark' single from Balance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7JT8te5nss

lol at the "Right Now" video having the caption "Right now God is killing women and dogs...because he has to"

ABBA, "The Visitors". It's a really bleak album, but hardly the album I reach for when I'm in the mood for something dark. I haven't actually heard it in years, but it is an essential part of the complete ABBA story.

Talking Heads’ Naked

Other than including a few more specifics in the lyrics, does anyone think this is edgier than Fear of Music?

Monkey on the cover does not scream dark and edgy

Good Charlotte - The Chronicles of Life and Death
Cher - not.com.mercial
Stereophonics - You Gotta Go There to Come Back
Pop Will Eat Iteslf - Dos Dedos Mis Amigos
BT - This Binary Universe
The Rollers (nee Bay City) - Elevator
Bloc Party - Intimacy
Raiders - Collage
Paul Revere & The Raiders - Something Happening
The Rascals - Freedom Suite
Beck - Sea Change
The McCoys - Infinite McCoys
Paul Revere & the Raiders - The Spirit of '67
Tommy James & The Shondells - Cellophane Symphony
Maxwell - Embrya
Finley Quaye - Vanguard
UB40 - Who You Fighting For?

Some of these are a bit more serious or somber, but are not the kind try-hard dark and edgy I thought this thread was about.

The Rollers (nee Bay City)

When a band pulls this trick, you know they're serious.

U2 - Zooropa

Some of these are a bit more serious or somber, but are not the kind try-hard dark and edgy I thought this thread was about.

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes), Friday, 12 July 2024 22:01 (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I might be getting thrown off, not just by the Stones/Beatles/OMD/REM/Pulp (also Madness and prog Kiss) examples but also 'edgy' and 'dark' kinda opening up lanes for two different kinds of album

tbf I don't think the Beatles had one of these either

I would say there's a difference between bands changing artistic direction a bit in an attempt to "mature" or whatnot, and groups who have fallen out of fashion and make an attempt to come back in an edgier persona-- see: Kris Kross going G-Funk.

I've just remembered Kate Nash's riot grrl album from 2012/13 time which, however unfortunately, was definitely received like that in some places (like the music forum I was on at the time. The video for Underestimate the Girl inspired a thread by a mod called 'This is the worst song I have ever heard in my whole life')

'Albums made in response to being called a sell out/mainstream cack' might be another way to look at this perhaps

There's a Freddie and the Dreamers album called Breaking Out from 1978. I've never heard it, but the sleeve depicts a heavily graffitied brick wall saying things like "FREDDIE GOES PUNK", the year 1963 crossed out and replaced with 1978, and some frankly unrepeatable things. I'm sure it's all in "good" humour to some degree but it's insane.

Would the Village People desperately going New Romantic for 1981's Renaissance count?

Pop acts 'going' R&B/hip hop and working with the right sorts counts to some degree right? Thinking partly of Glenn Medeiros/Bobby Brown but more-so of Peter Andre/Coolio, a link up which got a shades-wearing Andre dismissed as "still a commercial whore on a Live & Kicking phone-in.

A year later Mel B/Missy would seem as natural as anything, but then Mel B decidedly isn't Peter Andre.

Semi-related: Nelly Furtado's Loose Wikipedia page has a 'Controversy' section covering the temerity to show her midriff in her swapping hippy coffee table soul for Timbaland beats. A very 'pop Wikipedia' thing to cover in such detail.

Speaking of pop: Blackout!!!

Alvin and the Chipmunks - Chipmunk Punk

George Michaels’ Older

It’s a chimpanzee on the cover of Naked, which is not a monkey

I have inherited a copy of Chipmunk Punk but tbh I don't know how the rest of Alvin's catalogue was pitched, was it a radical departure? or did his fans think tbh this is just the same as his last album?

Throwing more out there...

The Church - Priest = Aura
Spectrum - Forever Alien
Boards Of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
The Triffids - In The Pines

maybe not ‘dark’ but achtung baby was absolutely pitched as edgy and was so only in relation to the rest of U2’s catalog

it’s pretty good nevertheless imo

i think priest = aura is pretty dark especially compared to previous church records!

Can’t forget Phil Collins’s But Seriously…

I thought Phil's was Both Sides - he even had to Dance Into The Light afterwards

Prince was worried about being thought of as gay????!!!!

― Bad Bairns (Boring, Maryland)

well he was incredibly homophobic, so yeah

he was a, uh, complicated man

Boards Of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

― Elvis Telecom

this is a weird example because i think of boc as being pretty fuckin' dark already, _tomorrow's harvest_ is one of the absolute bleakest albums i've heard

It’s a chimpanzee on the cover of Naked, which is not a monkey

in what universe is a chimpanzee not a monkey

anyway I think Naked was pitched more as a 'return to remain-in-light sort of rhythms' album than a 'dark' album.

oh, I guess chimpanzees are just apes, and monkeys are cousins. apologies for not knowing all my monkey-ology

Apes= no tails

Monkeys= tails

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey

Gorillaz - Humanz. Their post-Brexit/post-Trump alienation album.

(speaking of apes)

Geogaddi is scary. Tomorrow's Harvest isn't as memorable to me but it is very bleak, yes.

Pat Boone - In a Metal Mood

Kind of a deep cut as it were but I think Dead Cities by The Future Sound of London fits here, it's definitely a far cry from their earlier ambient techno sound, veering into industrial dark territory.

Richard D James Album by Aphex Twin too, maybe?

surely there's a Gary Numan album that fits here

I think he persued that nu metal audience for some time IIRC

Albums I've never heard but I think might fit the bill:

The Divine Comedy - Regeneration
Feeder - Comfort In Sound
Pat Metheny - Zero Tolerance For Silence

There's definitely something more outwardly bleak with Tomorrow's Harvest than any of their previous stuff

Kind of a deep cut as it were but I think Dead Cities by The Future Sound of London fits here, it's definitely a far cry from their earlier ambient techno sound, veering into industrial dark territory.

good call
though ISDN had already intro'd a darker side to the FSOL sound to a much lesser degree than Dead Cities.

Albums I've never heard but I think might fit the bill:

The Divine Comedy - Regeneration
Feeder - Comfort In Sound
Pat Metheny - Zero Tolerance For Silence

― PaulTMA, Saturday, 13 July 2024 18:14 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I know all three and they all kinda fit into the sort of lists I was making. Regeneation is another Don't Stand Me Down/Adore/This Is Hardcore/Tranqulity Base Hotel-style post-peak fame hotel room burnout melancholy record *breathes in*

Comfort in Sound - in common with the 'Phonics's You Gotta Go There to Come Back and the Manics' This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours - is a 'Welsh rockers go soft and upset half the fanbase' record

Zero Tolerance for Silence is spiritually maybe more like Metal Machine Music or that one BRMC drone album.

how about Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz

Pat Boone - In a Metal Mood

― rick beato meato manifesto (Neanderthal)

You can't post that without the cover:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81QrWpJe8xL._SL300_.jpg

Genesis' Calling All Stations might count really. Certainly presents as 'edgier' than your mum's Genesis - gruff rock man Ray Wilson, industrial rhythms, doom and gloom all around (except on the Savage Garden-goes-worldbeat smash "Congo")

What about this Tom Jones album The Lead and How to Swing It? I’ve never heard it

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81l0oIlqVBL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

Lol I don't know anything but this single from that album, which is him trying to do 90s dance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqDEn7uUhFc

The Lead... is Jones in High 90s Pop mode. Dark Jones is Praise & Blame, from 2010, a whole album of blues and gospel songs given almost Tom Waits-ish arrangements. It's amazing, and he did three more great records after it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHCcJtYxB1g

Methany also has Song X

Surrounded by Time is still my fav album of the last few years :')

I got to interview Jones when Surrounded by Time came out. It was amazing. I've interviewed a lot of artists but relatively few that are famous on the "my parents have heard of them" level. Tom Jones, Carlos Santana, Ozzy...that's about it.

watching those two Tom Jones clips back to back made my head explode. would be down for a companion thread of pop artists who fully embrace the darkness of old age.

ooh what about that William Shatner produced by Ben Folds? I think that was pretty good, tho?

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71QkjgGZljL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg

It was brilliant, that album

Based on the cover art, that album makes me imaging Tom Jones belting a song-for-song covers album of The Ghost of Tom Joad.

*makes me imagine

not dark or edgy but since you guys were talking about ll cool j i had to post this. 40 years after "I Need A Beat".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03I2Dse1B3Y

yeah the new LL is looking like some AOTY material

The album that immediately occurred to me (after Stakes Is High at any rate) was Mezzanine.

I guess you could make a case for Portishead and Tricky's late 90s releases too, but they seem to me more just cases of artists leaning into their own aesthetic predilections rather than borrrowing external signifiers of darkness.

(you could make the same point re several of the albums mentioned in this thread, e.g. The Church's Priest=Aura is their darkest album (assuming they haven't done anything darker in the last 20 years) like The Cure's Pornography is their darkest album: they don't feel like reinventions of the band/artist's sound so much as an intensification of existing aspects of it)

Shouldn't the LL Cool J one be Mama Said?

Genuine question that. I know 14 Shots is him going West Coast but I see Mama Said as the one there to abruptly remind you that he LL is and always has been hardcore and don't you forget it etc etc

If a Cure album fits then it'd be Disintegration - Robert crafted it as his masterpiece, as a correction to those he felt weren't getting the band etc etc

Genuine question that. I know 14 Shots is him going West Coast but I see Mama Said as the one there to abruptly remind you that he LL is and always has been hardcore and don't you forget it etc etc

It was kind of a three-step process: He put out Walking With A Panther, which was a great record but critics decided it had the wrong tone for 1989, mere brilliant lyricism not enough in the era of Public Enemy and the Native Tongues. So he put out Mama Said Knock You Out a year later(!), with the whole "don't call it a comeback" message, and it had enough gigantic hits that 14 Shots didn't come out until 1993. It's funny that people say it's a West Coast-influenced album, because it sounds like pure East Coast boom-bap to me; Marley Marl produced half the tracks. The problems with it are the gun talk (not LL's thing before that, and he doesn't sell it well) and the fact that all the songs are too long, five minutes when they should be three.

Xpost - I feel like that is why Disintegration is not a good example, it’s too clearly a distillation of the band’s aesthetic rather than a leftfield swerve.

The PR presentation of Achtung Baby seems like the paradigmatic example of this thread’s topic. Ideally nominees should feature a more than a few of the following:

“We’re so bored by (the sound for which we are known)”
“We’ve been listening to a lot of (very recent music or unexpected and slightly niche old music)”
Name producers or collaborators known for being darker /edgier
Album recorded in Berlin or similar
First single is deliberately bracing for fans of the artist’s classic sound, as a harbinger of the new direction / “we’re not messing around”

A good recent example might be the last Halsey album

I do really need to (re)familiarise myself with 14 Shots. I haven't heard anything after it except Phenomenon - not sure given everything recently that I really want to (re)familiarise myself with that one

Was thinking earlier about glam metal bands doing their 'we're the business actually' albums: Skid Row's Slave to the Grind, Warrant's belated Ultraphobic, and err just those two come to mind. People call Def Leppard's Slang grungey but all I can remember is the confused title track that is anything but

Tim F knows what he’s talking about. And so In Utero.

Yeah In Utero is a very clean example. A decision to bring in Steve Albini as producer is basically a red flag for this kind of thing.

Actually the pretty clear example that I'm surprised I didn't think of before (and that no one else has mentioned): REM's Monster.

In Utero perhaps missing this from op?

always amuses me when people reinvent themselves in this way and it comes across as cringe and forced

Yeah, also it is actually edgy and dark

Perhaps Bush’s Razorblade Suitcase is the more correct inclusion

Smashing Pumpkins - Adore miiiight fit here. But I Think they actually nailed gothiness in the way that music can be theatrical and huggy sometimes, as opposed to dark dark dark

Actually the pretty clear example that I'm surprised I didn't think of before (and that no one else has mentioned): REM's Monster.

In the associated Rolling Stone cover story, Anthony DeCurtis described the album as:

a noisy, abrasive, postmodern, sexually charged maelstrom. Similar in style to the band’s more propulsive live shows in the past, although far less genial, Monster is easily the edgiest music the band has ever recorded.

So maybe fair to say that Monster’s edginess was positioned from the jump in relation to the rest of the band’s catalogue? I guess it’s a matter of opinion whether “it comes across as cringe and forced”…

Btw – with respect to your earlier observation, about how band members explain their creative approach / “inspiration” for the particular album, I think Buck’s comments are interesting here:

“We decided we wanted to make an uptempo electric record but without using any elements of heavy metal, which none of us ever listened to. So much of what’s happening now, all those bands liked the Ramones and Black Sabbath. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a Black Sabbath record. So we’re into a weird, purist, no metal whatsoever, very little blues, white rock roll thing.”

Also Stipe saying "“We smashed [the acoustic guitars] against the wall and told the string players to go home"

Accelerate almost another example? Maybe not coded 'edgy' so much as 'not sucking'. Pat and pretty coffee table sonics were out, Jacknife and amps and 'the live sound' were in

And maybe now The Cure is the Cure's example? Bringing in nu metal man Ross Robinson to give it a lumbering ugly "Cure heavy" sound.

Also Stipe saying "“We smashed [the acoustic guitars] against the wall and told the string players to go home"

― Tim F, Tuesday, July 16, 2024 8:01 AM bookmarkflaglink

wow rude

Rock and roll, phew!

Terror Twilight was teased as containing some “evil fucking music” iirc

I never recovered from that darkness

Automatic for the People felt this way to me when it came out. No "Stand" or "Shiny Happy People."

Who knew R.E.M. had 4 different dark and edgy albums

Stand in the place where you shiv

The edgiest they got was when they had that Criminal Minded rapper on a track

“AFTP” explored “darker themes,” but (again) within the context of the band’s own work… I don’t think it was positioned as a Joy Division album or something!

(I take the thread’s premise to be albums that overpromise & underdeliver in the dark/edgy department)

Neil Young's Ditch Trilogy

shoot, Low did it twice with "Drums and Guns" and "Double Negative"

(I take the thread’s premise to be albums that overpromise & underdeliver in the dark/edgy department)

― Stockton Asparagus Festival (morrisp), Tuesday, July 16, 2024 1:37 PM bookmarkflaglink

yeah, i mean I'm cool w/ where the thread has wound up as it's been very interesting, but you're right, I was thinking more 'lol look at these clowns trying so hard to be edgy, this is only 'dark' compared to their other shit, it's so tryhard'.

Dark — like heavy — is, to quote Dewey Redman, in the ear of the behearer.

Cardigans’ “Gran Turismo”

Hootie & The Blowfish “Fairweather Johnson”

I LIKED THE BRAVES IN 95

I’ll nod toward Bonnie Prince Billy‘s I See a Darkness as an album that signals (via its title, cover art, song titles, etc.) “you’re in for some seriously bleak sh!t” — but it’s more or less another Will Oldham album (if an uncommonly good one), maybe a touch more meditative than usual?

I feel like Kelly Clarkson's "My December" featured her talking about how she just wanted to rock and break free of the corporate pop trappings and it was a rock album but a very...polite one?

Arise Therefore is way more bleak than I See A Darkness, which is closer to being his Parklife or Woodface

was that Roni Size album in the mode with wu tang etc actually dark?

(re: in utero):

Yeah, also it is actually edgy and dark

― Tim F

nirvana's kind of a weird case because _nevermind_ was also kinda edgy and dark (i still can't listen to "polly") and because there was, of course, no follow-up to _in utero_. well, no musical follow-up, at least. cobain's followup to _in utero_ was... pretty dark, by any standard.

oh oh OH, Deacon Blue's Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, where they bought sunglasses and tentatively dance-rock/Achtung Baby-ise their sound, hiring a disinterested, opportunistic Oakenfold to produce

Box Car Racer

Yeah I think in most cases the context of "what happened next" is pretty important to how a purportedly "dark and edgy" album is viewed in retrospect.

Bush followed Nirvana's lead in using Albini for their second album, but for their third reverted back to the producers of their first album, which makes it easier to perceive the decision for the second-album as tryhard/hamfisted (though in that case the calculation behind the move was sufficiently obvious in real time that subsequent events were really just confirmation).

Similarly, you can see P!nk and Kelly Clarkson's careers following similar trajectories:

1. First album basically a major label creation.
2. Second album sees the artist move towards their "own" sound with darker and more personal rock-oriented content, but is also a commercial hit.
3. Third album leans on the darker rock vibes from the second album (P!nk even brought in Tim Armstrong from Rancid as her key collaborator) and underperforms.
4. Fourth album retreats somewhat from the above and leans on Max Martin / Dr Luke for help to reconquer the mainstream

xp to Tim F

The The's Mind Bomb ticks all those boxes above (achtung's pr) imo, except not recorded in Berlin. also, not sure if darker. edgier, in a great way, yeah

3. Third album leans on the darker rock vibes from the second album (P!nk even brought in Tim Armstrong from Rancid as her key collaborator) and underperforms.

Best album of her career.

maybe not ‘dark’ but achtung baby was absolutely pitched as edgy and was so only in relation to the rest of U2’s catalog

― mookieproof, Saturday, July 13, 2024 12:54 AM (three days ago)

fucking give me a W already

Gilbert O'Sullivan - I'm a Writer, Not a Fighter

Decided that he needed to become charismatically comparable to Ian Gillan or Robert Plant on stage (hmm sure), and toughened/clavinetted up his sound having heard Picture Book. Ambition was still there on the next album (recorded in LA and New York), but it's a (return to a) more relaxed sound.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

'Bands who tried to an Achtung Baby' could be a thread in itself, even if it often boils down to the artwork

Always thought it was amazing that Simple Minds of all bands dug deeper into AOR

Oh - I've got a good one! 'Fat Of The Land' by the Prodigy.

Music For A Jilted Generation was the album where they successfully shed their reputation for gimmicky pop/kiddy-rave tunes like 'Charly', turning out an album that announced itself by stating they were "taking their work back underground to stop it falling into the wrong hands".

But the darkness of Jilted sounded effortless - a genuine reflection of the illegal rave scene and how it was viewed both by ravers and outsiders, baiting the hysterical media and the Criminal Justice Bill with snarling, wheezing, cackling and choking sounds, tracks that referenced narcotics and a sound "fuck the police" stance.

So while Jilted was already one of the evilest-sounding things in album-oriented dance music, it wasn't until Fat Of The Land and its three flagship singles 'Firestarter', 'Breathe' and 'Smack My Bitch Up' that the Prodigy really started leaning into their new edgy guises. Keith Flint was put up-front as the edgy offspring of Johnny Rotten. The lyrics took-on a more violent, nihilistic turn, as early adopters of the nascent nu-metal door-slamming attitude that would dominate over the next several years.

But all this mugging for the camera felt less like the Prodigy were performing to freak out their primary audience of ravers. Rather, Liam and co fixed their sights firmly on the world outside the dancefloor. Fat Of The Land revelled in its edginess, causing minor controversies in the news over songs that may or may not have been about arson and domestic violence. It was more about scaring your gran and ruffling the feathers of Channel 4 News viewers than anything specifically "underground".

In 1998 they double-headlined Reading rock festival with the Beastie Boys, who famously told them to reel-in the misogynistic content of their controversial hit "Smack My Bitch Up". From my memory, they did not and there was a whole lot of moshing and not much dancing.

Ripe for parody, FOTL's punky edgelording was pastiched by Aphex Twin on 'Come To Daddy' (whose video literally had a demon screaming into an old lady's face in an absurd mockery of Keith's normy-baiting the year before). Peep Show also did a tremendous take-down of 'Firestarter', with Jez's terrible home-made knock-off 'Outrageous' in which he tells his mum he "won't come in for my fucking tea, you can eat it your fucking self".

The above is probably widely held received wisdom and broadly consistent with the label’s PR campaign I guess, but it doesn’t much resemble the actual experience of listening to FOTL - which aside from “Firestarter” and Breathe” only features Flint on two other tracks (“Serial Thrilla” and “Fuel My Fire” - the former being okay and the latter being awful).

If the album leant into anything, it’s big beat that wears its hip hop influence on its sleeve - in the vein of the previous album’s “Poison”. Howlett was fine at this, but his sound becomes less distinctive and slightly more lethargic the further it moves from its rave roots (this is not actually a problem with either “Firestarter” or “Smack…” which arguably are both the raviest and best tracks here, the album’s equivalents if “Break & Enter” and “Voodoo People” respectively) - and by that stage he was moving into a crowded field. In mid-97 it was difficult to get too excited about an album that was less exuberant or energetic than Dig Your Own Hole, less dense or dystopian than Dead Cities and less populist than Better Living Through Chemistry. But (“Fuel My Fire” aside) it seems a stretch to say that the album’s problem is too much punky edgelording.

Fuel My Fire isn't that bad. at least it made the Cosmic Psychos & L7 some money

Every “adult” album by a former Disney Channel star.

xpost I’m glad of the payday sure

Xp I mean yeah, it had lots of other problems, and to me was the Prodigy's "New Jersey". You're right, Firestarter was the strongest track, but it came out almost a year before the album with Breathe in the interrim. We'd got used to the general spubd and aesthetic by then, and as you say Tim F, the rest of the album was more-or-less drawing from.a similar pallette, albeit at a draggier pace. Jilted is an album of twists and turns FOTL not so much. And I maintain they made a conscious decision to play-up to a rockier, punkier aesthetic (likely a confluence of Britpop and nu metal). It didn't really feel like an album geared towards ravers and dancers to me

I agree this angle was largely pushed by the label and the album isn't really that edgelordy, but that's kind of the premise of the thread no?

Not that I was there but my impression of FOTL in the UK was that it was as true enough a crossover record as you get, at least for the young. Ravers, punks, pop kids, indie kids, hip hop kids and metalheads all united on one thing which is owning a copy of FOTL (I cannot word that in a way that doesn't sound a tad cringe).

Also my dad, 35 at the time, owned it, but he also owned the Prodigy's other two and no other dance albums at all (apart from Rave 92 on cassette) - which maybe speaks to Howlett's specific place in pop at the time

I definitely didn't hear of Prodigy until "Firestarter" so this seems like a largely successful tactic

The stupid Manic Street Preachers one.

The stupid Weezer one.

I definitely didn't hear of Prodigy until "Firestarter" so this seems like a largely successful tactic

― Jersey Devil Vance (President Keyes), Thursday, July 18, 2024 1:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

In retrospect I'm glad that they took so long to put out the album: "Firestarter" and "Breathe" inspired late-1996, 14-year-old me to pick up Music For the Jilted Generation, which had a much more profound impact on my taste than FOTL would have if it had been available at that point.

as far as REM goes, New Adventures in Hi-Fi seems like the most representative choice, given that the sound could accurately be described as "edgy" and "dark", with a sort of unusual narrative around how the album and its material came to be. but idk, it arrived on the back of an album already considered a departure (though not wholly original in itself), so maybe it was just following a pattern of branding each new album as creatively and conceptually different.

Yeah I think at most you might say New Adventures was REM's Zooropa in the sense of leaning into and expanding on the new direction announced by the prior album, but even then ("E-Bow The Letter" aside) I do tend to think of New Adventures as being more like an armistice between AFTP vibes and Monster vibes rather than a further journey into the leftfield.

This reminds me that 'Pop' is interesting vis a vis this thread's general premise and perhaps is in a similar category to Fat of the Land - billed as a further push into new edgy territory but in reality something of a retreat.

I do like The Cure s/t as an example, mostly due to how it sits alongside other albums: Bloodflowers was considered characteristic enough of the "classic" Cure sound to be pitched as the capstone of a trilogy (however imprecise this tag was), and s/t was self-professingly "dark" and "edgy", whilst paying dues to a sound/attitude outside the band's usual orbit.

Does Stina Nordenstam‘s Dynamite fit here? It seems like a genuinely dark album to me, not just in relation to her other material.

Pop is an interesting choice because it was definitely a bit weirdly more musically conservative in some of its trappings, and also the band's second-guessing after the fact, and yet it was more alienating to the fanbase than Zooropa had been. i think it's a pretty great album overall, despite some clunkiness here and there. it's unfortunate they couldn't commit to turning full-on into a techno band for this album, i think the best parts are where they either really embraced electronica fully (the first three tracks), or actually on the flipside where they went a bit darker and gloomier into spectral moodiness (the last three tracks.)

yes, there are clear precursors to the New Adventures sound in what came and went before. that said, I think it's a uniquely refreshing direction insofar as it embraces unruliness as a selling point, with a few eccentric -- and out of character -- touches here and there (that jarring siren on Leave, the turbulent lift in the chorus to Bittersweet Me etc etc). but this point falls outside the premise of the thread, I think.

x-post to Tim F

Feel like this kinda proves that U2 and R.E.M. don't really have one

The only albums by either that were really pitched up as 'we've got our edge back' are Achtung and Monster. Both bands glammed up for the occasion - in music and wardrobe - and wrote an album where the darker songs stand tall with the lurid songs which touch on sex and irony and yada yada you know the stories.

Zooropa, Pop and Hi-Fi are continuations rather than resets.

FWIW I adore all five albums

John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band
Harry Nilsson - Son of Schmilsson
Tim Buckley - Greetings from L.A.

Have U2 ever maintained a "new direction" for a whole album? It seems like every time they try this there are three interesting songs right at the beginning of the record and then they slump right back into being U2.

Suzanne Vega's 99.9F° (from the time when 'edgy' or 'dark' meant that you hired Mitchel Froom has a producer)

^^On that tip: Kiko by Los Lobos

you hired Mitchell Froom as a producer

...and to really go out on the edge, married him

the Mitchel Froom + Tchad Blake sound on those albums is something I'd like to hear revived, if it hasn't already

Mitchell*
been* already

something I'd like to hear revived

Just toss some scrap metal down your stairwell

And spend a laborious time mixing it to be just right and crisp

yes as a mega fan of both collosal head and brutal youth I agree!

99.9 is a classic, Vega’s best album IMO. The production suits the songs, and the songs are very good, plus Froom takes a backseat now and then. It’s the followup (with the green cover, can’t remember the title) that upsets the balance with clanks and boings.

idk I feel like 99.9F, when it chooses to, does go in harder on that than anything on Nine Objects of Desire. The latter doesn't really get clankier than "Birth-Day" or "Casual Match" and neither is quite "Blood Makes Noise" or even "Fat Man and Dancing Girl" imo

Ha yeah I just relistened to it for the first time in years and it’s less clanky than I remember, but it feels more classically “bad Froom”, in the sense that the production tries to distract from and paint over the songs. 99.9 has stronger choices but they actually work.

Never bothered to pick up 99.9F (seems like it was playing everywhere at the time) but have nice memories of 9OD. Felt very much of its time - cosy Wallpaper* mag music. Not so far removed from what Ivy would later be doing

does justin timberlake's sexy lumberjack album count?

Flood is another 'going dark' producer: Songs of Faith and Devotion (remembering hearing "I Feel You" for the first time), Zooropa and Pop,

Zooropa, Pop and Hi-Fi are continuations rather than resets.

I just went back and listened to Achtung Baby and Zooropa to argue with this - and believe me, I could - but now I'm just struck by how much more I like Zooropa, Achtung Baby hasn't aged nearly as well imo.

Zooropa is the darker weirder one sure, but it even beats Achtung Baby on the anthem front!

I thought the JT lumberjack album was more like a failed ‘back to nature’ album from the late 60s.

Zooropa is my favorite U2 album. I bought it the day it came out and I thought it blew away Achtung, Baby.

I didn't mean they made the same album again (far from it) - just that the reinventions that began on Achtung and Monster continued to develop on the follow-ups. Zooropa is inconceivable without Achtung (and its tour) happening first, and Hi-Fi, while with a higher quota of OOT/Automatic-type slow songs than the two on Monster, still grows out of Monster's rediscovery of glam (ands its tour).

I'm trying to think of some inverse/opposite examples of this - neo-classical/experimental composers making a pop album - and only got as far as Philip Glass' Songs from Liquid Days and The Residents' Commercial Album.

Pierre Henry and Spooky Tooth's Ceremony I suppose too

Not just Liquid Days really - Glassworks was meant to work more like 'pop' too

But if we really mean 'pop', what about Slapp Happy. Or Fred Frith's Cheap at Half the Price.

Or The Flying Lizards

Glass also produced and played some keyboards on the two Polyrock LPs

Can we count Cornelius Cardew's 'pop' era?

Stockhausen's "Ceylon/ Bird of Passage" album being released on Chrysalis Records probably counts - though it's a long way from being pop music!

Ditto Tony Conrad & Faust "Outside the Dream Syndicate":on Virgin Records.

Cathy Berbarian Pop Art

Moby - Animal Rights

I did already mention Animal Rights, but he's arguably got a few more of these - These Systems Are Failing and More Fast Songs About the Apocalypse

The difference being who cared by 2016 I suppose

https://lastfm.freetls.fastly.net/i/u/770x0/2fed0d5a7d7f48d88288447b3bceaece.jpg#2fed0d5a7d7f48d88288447b3bceaece

I know little about Bring Me the Horizon (and am not that interested either, other than having once heard Amo, their alleged Zooropa, and not enjoying it), but they did release that ostensibly avant-garde electronic album with the extremely long name back (and length) back in 2019, much to the bafflement of their fanbase of kiddy metalheads. I never listened to it.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/ep/bring-me-the-horizon/music-to-listen-to_dance-to_blaze-to_pray-to_feed-to_sleep-to_talk-to_grind-to_trip-to_breathe-to_help-to_hurt-to_scroll-to_roll-to_love-to_hate-to_learn-too_plot-to_play-to_be-to_feel-to_breed-to_sweat-to_dream-to_hide-to_live-to_die-to_go-to/

Limp Bizkit also did The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) in 2005, an attempt to be 'serious' and adult. Or was that Results May Vary? Think they tried it twice in a row.

I'm trying to think of some inverse/opposite examples of this - neo-classical/experimental composers making a pop album - and only got as far as Philip Glass' Songs from Liquid Days and The Residents' Commercial Album.

― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, August 3, 2024 7:46 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Liz Phair s/t is one of these.

Flood is another 'going dark' producer: Songs of Faith and Devotion (remembering hearing "I Feel You" for the first time), Zooropa and Pop,

― bratwurst autumn (Eazy), Friday, 2 August 2024 18:53 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

This doesn’t really make sense to me. Flood’s role on Songs was the same as on Violator (with respect to this argument makes more sense). Songs has more guitars and Gahan sings in a more strained “rock frontman” manner but it feels like all the additional darkness/edginess was coming from the band.

And Achtung, Zooropa and Pop are roughly on the same level of darkness/edginess with Zooropa a nose in front - if anything Pop was a slight retreat, which if it suggests anything suggests that it was Eno rather than Flood who was pushing the band into that territory.

I do think Flood during the 90s was a byword for a kind of stylistic corrosion: rock that began to resemble dance music, dance music that began to resemble rock. That overlaps heavily with this thread’s preoccupations, but I’m not sure he is necessarily the force driving bands and artists towards trying to be “edgy”

Broadly agree re:Flood but I do wanna comment that Pop is, I reckon, the 'darkest' of the three U2's, certainly ahead of Zooropa. The latter definitely wraps these things up more ambiguously - such that the title track can be (and has been) written about as both optimistic and sinister - but I don't think it would make room for a "If God Will Send His Angels", "Please" or "Wake Me Up Dead Man" (which was indeed tested for it and dropped). Pop ends as miserably as Achtung and keeps at it a bit longer.

Could boy band members going solo in ways that seek to paint over their past count? Robbie's Life Thru a Lens* is pretty much the template - pretty much everything on it is an upraised V to Barlow and Barlowisms. But even Mark Owen's Green Man before Rob took a politer way of going about Britpop things and John Leckie was roped in for the occasion.

Or girl bands? Melanie C's Northern Star is a mostly very enjoyable trek where she tries on all sorts of 'credible' jackets - its four singles jumping territory from Garbage to Madonna to TLC to Ferry Corsten, as you do - in ways that may have endeared her further to Radio 1 (if not, infamously, the NME). The Spice Girls' own third album Forever was built on a loose girls-to-women bedrock of sophistication but mostly your lot is a host of R&B legends delivering their B or C game. Mel B's own album Hot was an even more overt attempt - following earlier hits with Missy Elliott and then Timbaland - to cast her in the nu-R&B mould.

*I feel like Rudebox could count too on the 'edge' front - relative to the pensive material on its surrounding albums. No "Dickhead" or "The 80s" or "Good Doctor" on those.

Wake Up* Dead Man

appreciate the vega/froom discussion above. "darkness" or whatever aside, those albums rule. i used to throw "casual match" into dance sets. i love suzanne vega! lee ranaldo plays on some of her later records.

I'm trying to think of some inverse/opposite examples of this - neo-classical/experimental composers making a pop album - and only got as far as Philip Glass' Songs from Liquid Days and The Residents' Commercial Album.
― Elvis Telecom, Saturday, August 3, 2024 7:46 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Simon Bookish's Everything/Everything is one of these, incredible because it's such a fantastic pop album too, clever and endlessly relistenable, and none of his other albums sound a thing like it, the rest is pretty much all experimental stuff which I find kinda boring

Derek Bailey - ballads? I don’t think he commits to the bit though

Jim O’Rourke?

I'm trying to think of some inverse/opposite examples of this - neo-classical/experimental composers making a pop album - and only got as far as Philip Glass' Songs from Liquid Days and The Residents' Commercial Album.

Would Nico Muhly's Planetarium count?

Wasn't Scatman John's background in avant-garde jazz?

Portsmouth Sinfonia had a UK top 40 hit with the posthumous Classical Muddly

Not a pop album but Bailey's brush with (contemporary) popular music would be Guitar, Drums 'n' Bass

Broadly agree re:Flood but I do wanna comment that Pop is, I reckon, the 'darkest' of the three U2's, certainly ahead of Zooropa. The latter definitely wraps these things up more ambiguously - such that the title track can be (and has been) written about as both optimistic and sinister - but I don't think it would make room for a "If God Will Send His Angels", "Please" or "Wake Me Up Dead Man" (which was indeed tested for it and dropped). Pop ends as miserably as Achtung and keeps at it a bit longer.

This is a good point and I haven't really thought about it before. I wonder if they took the wrong lesson from Pop's failure.

Reminded today of trance's own Dazzle Ships.. BT's This Binary Universe. Would that count?

Kerrang!'s own Dazzle Ships would be Linkin Park's A Thousand Suns. What about that?

I like this exercise!

Also love the Simon Bookish aka Leo Chadburn shout-out upthread, kudos to you frogbs. Leo keeps making more and more masterful contemporary music, and gaining in his deserved recognition for it

I was thinking of Behaviour by the Pet Shop Boys, which is just generally sadder than Actually and Please. Not so much dark and edgy as wistful. Although it still has "Where The Streets Have No Name" on it.

Except that it doesn't! I was remembering wrong. I also learn from the internet that, yes, it really was released as Behavior in the United States. And I'm reminded of how mystifyingly crap Harold Faltermeyer's career was.

After that album the Pet Shop Boys went back to a kind of pure hyper-pop sound with Very. It's a puzzling album, in that the contemporary press seems to treat it as just another Pet Shop Boys album albeit stacked with ballads, and in theory it's more more than their "imperial phase" records, but they started out mature. It has more life experience.

Flood’s role on Songs was the same as on Violator (with respect to this argument makes more sense). Songs has more guitars and Gahan sings in a more strained “rock frontman” manner but it feels like all the additional darkness/edginess was coming from the band.

Belatedly, I came across something recently reporting that Flood was apparently uncomfortable with the (for lack of a better phrase) band-directed edginess of Nine Inch Nails c. "Downward Spiral." It's telling that, unless I'm mistaken, he doesn't work with them anymore after that, though I'm unclear if there was a real falling out.

My (possibly very wrong) impression of Reznor eschewing Flood for Moulder is probably similar to XTC swapping Lillywhite for Padgham - a sense of 'Okay well that went well but your engineer has proved he can do that sort of lifting for me alone now and it'll go smoother'

A few more possible glam metal ones, neither of which I've heard, bonus to Skid Row and Warrant ones upthread

(The) L.A. Guns - American Hardcore - they make, apparently, a Pantera album? (and not early an Pantera album, they'd made those already)

Poison - Flesh & Blood - binning the makeup and by-and-large the 'fun'? (or so everyone seems to say. Unskinny Bop must be an anomaly)

I've listened to both Flesh & Blood and now Native Tongue and the latter doesn't even really bother with an 'Unskinny Bop'. The lead single was the earnest gospelly 'Stand'. Plus they got in a srs bizniz hard blues guitarist. And there's no bouncy colours on the sleeve. And it's 1993.

I suspect Winger's Pull may fit as well - except I haven't heard a single second of their music, so maybe not.

I've listened to both _Flesh & Blood_ and now _Native Tongue_

Why?

Also this Wikipedia entry was definitely self-written: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_discography

I doubt that.

Why?

In the spirit of this thread!

What were all the post-Achtung Baby albums? Thread mentions Deacon Blue, Suzanne Vega and Los Lobos and I would also add parts of Bruce Springsteen's Human Touch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAlDbP4tdqc

TIL that there was a Walmart exclusive version of the Poison classic rock covers album from 2007 that included a "bonus" cover of "SexyBack". May I never befoul my ears with such a horror.

Ghostyhead

I did actually enjoy the little doodles on the Poison albums, if only because they're there and they know that it's something Van Halen do so why don't they do the same thing

What were all the post-Achtung Baby albums? Thread mentions Deacon Blue, Suzanne Vega and Los Lobos and I would also add parts of Bruce Springsteen's Human Touch

INXS have two - Welcome to Wherever You Are and (coincidence because I listened to it only today) Full Moon, Dirty Hearts - which is interesting if you consider that Achtung was the closest U2 had come to INXS anyway. Some chicken-or-the-egg malarkey at play.

Crowded House - Together Alone. Beyond hiring Youth as producer, it only really shows on about half the tracks, especially "Skin Feeling" which is essentially "Wrote for Luck".

A case could be (and has been) made for Songs of Faith and Devotion - right down to the shared use of Flood - albeit (like INXS) it's a band travelling in the opposite direction. And Monster if you factor in how both albums see their makers glam up in music and wardrobe. "King of Comedy" even has a sorta-almost dance beat.

"King of Comedy" even has a sorta-almost dance beat.

And an 808 State remix!

It also occurred to me last year when I was researching old Deacon Blue articles that Wet Wet Wet circa 1992's High on the Happy Side were seen as taking a credibility stab, nay, a successful one, according to a DB article in, oh hey, M8 magazine

Wet Wet Wet were being written off prior to their last album because of their predominantly teenage appeal. They produced a mature album, made new fans and were flavour of the month again.

Was this a Scotland-specific thing or did it actually get good UK reviews across the board?

Huey Lewis & The News's contemplative Small World.

(Cover photo looks halfway to Marion Ettlinger's photos of Raymond Carver and Richard Ford.)

Small World is prime 'post-Graceland/So'. I like that dub track in the middle.

Another possible post-Achtung Baby I'm only just listening to for the first time right now: the Mission's Masque. Dance beats, rhythmic electronics, sporadic distorted vocals, cool producer, all the usual trappings make themselves known, mostly before the halfway mark. Generally it's like the opposite of the overall thread - a 'dark' bad lightening up a bit. Especially with the 'jazzy' indiepop ditty, followed by the Eastern-flavoured novelty and the fiddle-laden Wonder Stuff pastiche, all in the middle. Later songs (especially "You Make Me Breathe") go for chillout percussion but sometimes bizarrely squared by late 80s sophisti-pop sax (one song goes "don't need no Primal Scream", and "I'm Comin' Down" these songs aren't). Not sure the songwriting's usually quite up to the occasion, but it's a nice-sounding album and "Until There's Another Sunrise" is lovely, sometimes almost Saint Etienne-ish in its airy way without actually sounding like them (those echoed synthpads at the end, again with the sax, do contribute to an atmosphere that is probably closer than, say, "Moments in Love", to what a lot of dull vaporwave producers were chasing).

(And, speaking of 'post-Graceland/So', I was only made aware of Harry Belafonte's Paradise in Gazankulu earlier in the week).

Billy Idol- Cyberpunk

tbf I don't think the Beatles had one of these either

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes), Friday, July 12, 2024 5:11 PM (one year ago)

Beatles example is obviously Beatles For Sale