2010s Pop/Mainstream Albums Lost to History

I know we have a thread dedicated to shifts or changes in the 2010s canon.

This thread is not for that.

This thread is for albums that just sorta came and went, that when you're thinking through an artist's catalogue you just blank on - and it becomes necessary to consult Wikipedia that, oh yeah, this person's career wasn't just a black hole from 2016 to 2020: a record did came out? It's just that nobody really cared. There were pans or polite critical hosannas, then that sucker sunk like it never existed.

Obviously this will be different for different folks. If I were a billionaire and could fund a ILM the magazine we would dedicate a whole issue to this and it would be awesome.

Here are the two records that inspired this thread:

Jay-Z - Magna Carta Holy Grail
The Carters - Everything is Love

What say you?

Lady Gaga - Joanne

There are loads of these, Kanye’s last couple records and that album when Katy Perry danced awkwardly with Migos spring to mind.

Madonna's Rebel Heart. It debuted at top 10 in several countries, but immediately dropped from there because apparently only the superfans bought it. It had no big hits, and in terms of sales was her least successful album ever. (Though this year's Madame X might beat it.)

Pink's whole career has been like this, but her last two albums, Beautiful Trauma (2015) and Hurts 2B Human (2017), in particular.

Dr Dre, Compton

Meghan Trainor, presumably.

i know a lot of us would very much like for kanye's work subsequent to, let's say, 2016 to be lost to history, or at least to be able to pretend it didn't happen, but i think we're all very aware that kanye still exists and is still doing things.

His latest is way too strange to just go away. If anything I could see Life of Pablo be the totally forgotten one.

Man of the Woods.

It seems weird that Gorillaz have released four albums this decade. Plastic Beach will probably be remembered, but I doubt any of the others will despite Humanz and The Now Now making the top five.

Kanye does not belong on this thread lmao

Big Sean albums maybe? Ppl remember his singles but his career is rarely mentioned. 2 chainz isn’t quite forgotten but I bet again he’s more remembered as a singles artist.

Sorry I guess everyone can remember a song off that one where he scribbled on an iPhone picture of a mountain

Did you know Train did a full cover album of Led Zeppelin II?

the AV Club named it one of the Least Essential Albums of whatever year it came out, that level of superfluity transcends the unmemorable IMO

in fact i now remember nothing about train _except_ that they covered the second led zeppelin album in its entirety

There's a couple of songs on that Kanye West albums I can't forget. The one that's just him fantasizing about killing someone. The one where he tries to talk about being bipolar and just ends up screaming. And Ghost Town, which is brilliant. The coda especially.

It's not what you'd call a 'good' album, but it's not like those on the least essential albums list either. And as someone with bipolar people in my close family, I'm really happy the album exists.

Imagine Dragons - Smoke + Mirrors, aka the album that made people think we wouldn't hear much from them anymore

Panic at the Disco - Vices and Virtues

Miley Cyrus - Can't be Tamed

Every Drake album?

Hate to say it but E•MOTION by Carly Rae Jepsen seems like it will be relegated to hidden gem by future generations and it’s one, if not the best, of the mainstream pop albums of the decade. Sure critics loved it but that doesn’t mean anything nowadays does it?

Sleigh Bells - Treats was also an album that seemed huge to me in 2010 but it looks like it has been lost since I haven’t seen it mentioned much in eod lists.

Hate to say it but E•MOTION by Carly Rae Jepsen seems like it will be relegated to hidden gem by future generations and it’s one, if not the best, of the mainstream pop albums of the decade. Sure critics loved it but that doesn’t mean anything nowadays does it?

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, December 25, 2019 11:36 PM bookmarkflaglink

This is madness. This album has an EXTREMELY ONLINE fan army and its praises will be sung for all time.

Efforts by Tove Lo, Icona Pop and to a lesser degree Ke$ha and Charli XCX also seem destined to pop graveyard.

Xpost: I really hope you’re right as I am in love with that album and wish it lives on forever as a defining album of the decade.

Sleigh Bells - Treats

It's a risk run by an artist who records essentially the same song 40 different times.

H.E.R. already trends like an artist loved exclusively by Grammy voters and barely anyone in the real world.

Nah her has a pretty real r&b fanbase

U2 - Songs of Innocence

(I suspect. Fans can confirm, though.)

By the way, a *lot* of good calls here - Gaga, Timberlake, Dr. Dre. (Some of the other artists named I can't speak to.)

Agree that Kanye's a weird case because his decade has mostly sucked but he's figured out how to stick like a thorn in public consciousness.

Is Drake more of a singles artist?

that album when Katy Perry danced awkwardly with Migos spring to mind.

― a hoy hoy, Wednesday, December 25, 2019 12:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

came here to post this lol

Agree that Kanye's a weird case because his decade has mostly sucked but he's figured out how to stick like a thorn in public consciousness.

There's a difference between people talking about him on Twitter and people listening to his music, though. His name never totally fades away, but a) a significant percentage of that (maybe the majority at this point) is ridicule, and b) his actual records, the subject of this thread, have a shelf life of about 48 hours. They dribble out (usually after they were supposed to), critics file panicked one-listen reviews, sites get clicks, and then...

I mean, when was the last time anyone talked about Kids See Ghosts? I had to Google "kanye west kid cudi" just to be reminded of its title.

Please dont make this a kanye thread

Any Coldplay album that came out after Viva la Vida

The two recent Take That albums where they were just down to being a three piece. Similarly, Robbie Williams second swing album.

Any Coldplay album that came out after Viva la Vida

Yeah, definitely. I actually bought Ghost Stories, but I don't think I listened to it twice, and I've never heard the one before it or the one after it. The new one's surprisingly good, but the damage has already been done.

Fair point, unperson. (I forgot Kids See Ghosts even happened until you mentioned it, and that's an album I forced myself to listen to once, for some reason, upon release.)

Here are some albums that I didn't even know *existed* until like ten minutes ago.

John Mayer - Born and Raised
T-Pain - 1UP
R. Kelly - 12 Nights of Christmas
Snoop Dogg - Coolaid

P!nk is an artist who only seemed to really register musically - for me - up until Try This. After that she was just an annoying presence at awards shows.

The too-obvious-to-mention subtext to this thread is the atomization of the monoculture, of course. BUT STILL.

Snoop Lion - Reincarnated

Did you know Train did a full cover album of Led Zeppelin II?

― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, December 25, 2019 5:27 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I didn't!

A lot of this shit is going to be rediscovered in 25 years' time I reckon, but everyone forgot about Emeli Sande despite that album having sold literally millions.

The 20:20 Experience was wiped from the history books pretty quickly as well.

I didnt mean to make this a Kanye thread, I just thought the past 3 or 4 have gone this way.

That last chance album about his wedding seems destined to go this way too? I don’t think I’ve seen anyone talk about it since it came out.

I recognize that no one has taken Snoop seriously in a long time (including the man himself) but... but...this happened in 2019 and I had no idea of it until I wandered onto his wikipedia page:

"Snoop Dogg collaborated with Vietnamese singer Son Tung M-TP in Hãy Trao Cho Anh (Give it to Me), which was officially released on July 1, 2019.[citation needed] As of October 3, 2019, the music video has amassed 158,886,366 views on YouTube."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knW7-x7Y7RE

Me: What did Snoop do in 2019?
Universe: He chilled out with Martha Stewart and played himself in The Beach Bum. Very on brand shit.
Me: But what about in music though
Universe:

That Chance album; yeah. It came out and then vanished.

Was there any real big beloved rock band releases this decade? I just had to google Radiohead* because I knew they did something** that no one seemed to really care about or remember - King of Limbs.

*I know people still like the moon one but there was another...
**i know I was the person to bring up Kanye, and much like him, Radiohead have people who will stan for anything, but outside of them I can’t see it being remembered that well.

the 20/20 singles are still around, oddly including "Mirrors" which seemed like the most redundant and unnecessary addition to the JT oeuvre but so it goes. think we got into this a bit in one of the New Jersey threads a year or two back, and i might have come down on the side of it being forgotten? to me now it seems like it was too big of an event/singles juggernaut to be lumped in with the Katy Perry and Gaga fizzles.

"Mirrors" and "Suit & Tie" are still around.

I think the first 20/20 disc is still "around"? (On a personal level I ride for it.) Part 2 is where things started to go wrong.

I know they have hardcore fans here and elsewhere, but Fall Out Boy seem to fall into this hole this decade.

I mean, when was the last time anyone talked about Kids See Ghosts? I had to Google "kanye west kid cudi" just to be reminded of its title.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Thursday, December 26, 2019 8:10 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

he had three major albums this decade which did not have this problem. (I don't even really like two of them but they're a major part of history )

Every single album released by Eminem this decade.

'Recovery' is an important part of his artistic narrative and is also certified 3x platinum

That Robin Thicke album after the one with Blurred Lines on it

^^Good One. His Paula Patton breakup album Paula (his last album too).

again we didn't "forget" that one we just work hard not to speak of it, nobody actually _asks_ what happened to robin thicke, even if we've consciously forgotten subconsciously... we know.

Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" and Cee-Lo's "Fuck You" were unassailable classics the years they were released and have been summarily written out of all the Best of the Decade Lists for, um, reasons

lol @ "fuck you" being an unassailable classic

Feel like people forgot about the song "Control" pretty quickly after Kendrick's verse was quickly deemed the best in history or whatever.

Miley Cyrus - Can't be Tamed

― MarkoP, Wednesday, December 25, 2019 6:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i was gonna say that album she did with the flaming lips

lol @ "fuck you" being an unassailable classic

pretty sure "blurred lines" was plenty controversial at the time, hardly unassailable then

Michael Jackson - Xscape
Jennifer Lopez - A.K.A.
Maroon 5 - V
Nicole Scherzinger - Big Fat Lie

This Unruly Mess I’ve Made

Juicy J’s big 2013 album or whatevr

The Miley Cyrus shit too

Some of Lady gaga’s shit also

i kinda still like 'stay trippy'

I feel like Gaga’s extremely online stanbase means it’s almost impossible for any of her albums to truly fit this category.

And that general dynamic (the increasing importance in pop music of passionate fans relative to widespread popularity) moreover means it’s difficult to identify many examples that genuinely combine “this artist is well-known or was well-known at some point in the decade” (unlike, I dunno, Mya or Ashanti or etc.) and “it’s legit difficult to find people who even remember let alone passionately defend this album”.

I expect that Britney Jean and the second Meghan Trainor album get pretty close though.

Hmm I do think with Gaga tho from 2010 the scale of her “passion fanbase” drops drastically, more drastically than the average for an artist peaking at that time

The ones that left Gaga migrated to LDR.

How about this?:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3f/Gwen_Stefani_-_This_Is_What_the_Truth_Feels_Like_%28Official_Album_Cover%29.png

She should've kept her promise to be done releasing albums after The Sweet Escape.

Definitely agree that Gaga’s fanbase shrunk this decade at least until A Star Is Born.

One pop star who basically ceased to exist in the public imagination after their biggest album is Nelly Furtado, who has in fact had 3 studio albums since 2006’s ‘Loose’.

See also Corinne Bailey Rae

furtado has always seemed so strange to me, an obvious major new ("new") star when "promiscuous" dropped, followed by like three more major major singles, and then not only did nothing ever happened, it never felt like anyone was even waiting for something to happen. five years went by, i caught the "big hoops" video once in a hotel room but it felt like a strange dream in that nobody else had any idea she was mounting a comeback.

“Promiscuous” already felt like a “comeback” for her; except she had cast aside her distinctiveness, etc.

I feel like she's had a little bit of a renaissance via remixes/samples, the biggest of which is the Four Tet one

Isn't Gwen Stefani positioning herself as Blake Shelton's Wife? She exists as a supermarket mag cover star.

^ I didn't know about this

thread title is so absurdly dramatic compared to some of the examples proffered

albums that generate one ~hit, make a modest splash upon release and then fuck off forever, possibly generating a few favorable column-inches of coverage for a week are literally the norm for the music industry now. might as well just copy and paste the billboard 200 chart every week

miley's dead petz album

xp but yeah, a distinction really could be made between "underperformed in retrospect" vs. "commercially successful, even wildly successful but written out of/never written into canon" (i.e. every maroon 5 album) vs. "almost everyone forgot about" vs. "literally gone from the world"