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

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.