What acts have had a huge selling album and the follow up sells far less yet is critically favoured by fans and music critics? (Every Huge Artist Has A Tusk)

Hissing of Summer Lawns arguably also counts, though perhaps more on ILM than amongst critics/fans generally.

I assume Rickie Lee Jones' Pirates also sold a lot less than her debut.

Fiona's When the Pawn...

Terence Trent D'Arby - Neither Fish Nor Flesh

did people seriously used to take dave marsh seriously? i mean, look, rolling stone gave "the final cut" five stars, but everybody still hated it.

Marsh didn't write the RS review of The Final Cut; that was Kurt Loder. Marsh had left RS by that point.

re TTD, I thought that everyone loved Symphony or Damn rather than Neither Fish Nor Flesh?

Aqua - Aquarius

Rihanna - Rated R

ha -- I just wrote about the Symphony non-phenomenon

Er...

re: In Utero, "its still a fan favourite and at the time people did prefer it." i'm sure some people did, but that hardly would've been a consensus.

not an anglo/am example but the japanese epitome of this would be shiina ringo's masterpiece: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalk_Samen_Kuri_no_Hana

There isn't really a critical consensus around 'Tusk' vs 'Rumours' either so let's not pretend this thread premise has much basis in reality.

Fleetwood Mac - best album (a poll)

Not kidding!

but how many people who are really Smashing Pumpkins fans would say "yeah, it's definitely better than MCIS"?

hey

― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Monday, September 7, 2015 9:04 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

enough SP fans prefer adore for it to qualify. critical consensus has softened, it's considered their last masterwork now.

does Field Day qualify?

Field Day and the first album peaked in the same position.

Presence - Led Zeppelin

There isn't really a critical consensus around 'Tusk' vs 'Rumours' either so let's not pretend this thread premise has much basis in reality.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, 9 September 2015 16:00 (3 hours ago) Permalink

otm, probably should be "Every Huge Artist has a Paul's Boutique" Obvious caveat that every huge artist doesn't have one, but every huge artist doesn't have a New Jersey either.

but how many people who are really Smashing Pumpkins fans would say "yeah, it's definitely better than MCIS"?

hey

― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Monday, September 7, 2015 9:04 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

enough SP fans prefer adore for it to qualify. critical consensus has softened, it's considered their last masterwork now.

― flappy bird, Wednesday, September 9, 2015 9:56 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no

Blind Melon - Soup

Presence - Led Zeppelin

― flappy bird, Wednesday, September 9, 2015 2:11 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Definitely not critically favored over Physical Graffiti

even if critical consensus has softened, though, i feel like this thread is asking for something a bit narrower - it needs to be favored by fans at large, like it's generally understood if you go to the usenet group for that band, preferring album B over A is what separates the fans from the masses who bought A, or whatever. like i'm really feeling Pinkerton and Return of Saturn as the exemplars here.

maybe i'm reading too much into the question but otherwise it just starts to be "albums after more successful albums, on which some people have sorta come around."

yeah this maybe oughtta be Has A Pinkerton (but even then it's a little blurred since TBA is their only other critically acclaimed album, and it does sometimes rank higher on lists)

I had no idea that Return of Saturn is the fan/critical favorite No Doubt record! I thought their 3 big albums were all pretty equally rated, but it totally makes sense that Return of Saturn would be the favorite.

Xpost Yeah, true. Pinkerton was almost undisputably this for at least a year or two in the late 90s (I mean I think feeling this way was what *made* you a fan of Weezer-as-band), but those years loom disproportonately long in my memory.

I feel like anything where the artist is ostensibly wrestling with personal demons, particularly if they are stretching musically into more dissonant terrain (In Utero, Pinkerton), or into like longer compositions or weirder arrangements (Pet Sounds, No Code... The Nylon Curtain, maybe?) is susceptible to this, since it's tailor-made for fans to construct their own identity as the ones who Get It, while almost guaranteed to shed some of the previous record's buyers. AllMusic urges you to spend time with it - it's a record that reveals its layers slowly, etc. If Dave Matthews doesn't have one of these I'd be surprised.

Of course, another version is a cult band with one crossover (or arguable sellout) record, who then don't try to keep that success going, or just don't succeed, so naturally most of the fanbase prefers the later record. (Of course it'll get complicated where people go on to discover the band *through* the hit album and become fans.) I wonder where the Modest Mouse fan community stands on We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.

Does Todd Rundgren - A Wizard, A True Star count? No idea how it sold but it didn't exactly have the massive hits his prior album did.

One of the original examples of this: Jefferson Airplane - After Bathing At Baxter's

@Gorefest no question that diehard =w= fans, to this day, will almost always side with pinkerton. and its existence is really only the reason any of those people still exist – blue alone would not have sustained them through 20 years of what followed.

it's definitely my preference, though if someone were to say blue is objectively better i wouldn't call them on that

Smiley Smile, maybe? Although I guess you have to be pretty contrarian to prefer it to Pet Sounds. If Smile had come out when it was supposed to, it would be the ultimate example.

couldn't you make the argument for Pet Sounds itself? I was under the impression that it didn't actually sell very well at the time

Ha, yes — was just about to post that caveat

pet sounds was not "huge selling" at the time.

It met with a lukewarm critical and commercial response in the United States, peaking at number 10 in the Billboard 200, a significantly lower placement than the band's preceding albums.

xps

kinks following up lola, which at the time was their big comeback album, with muswell hillbillies probably fits here.

A measly 9.2, Rumours the p4k gave http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21924-tusk/

p4k *fave that is

one of the better written reviews I've read lately imo