10 Rock Music Albums No One Understood At First
How to Get It Wrong.
It’s never easy trying to find your audience in the music world. When you sit down to write something that comes from the heart, there’s almost a stroke of luck that goes into it, almost praying that someone else out there will understand the kind of emotions that you’re dealing with in your songs. It’s nice when they do, but you also shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t really know what to make of it either.
Because even though these albums might be praised to high heaven these days, it wasn’t always like that. If you look back at the way some of these were treated upon release, they were given a pretty good beating, either by the fans who didn’t like the new direction that they went down or critics who thought that these records would tarnish the band’s career.
Everyone’s a critic though, and most of these bands ended up having the last laugh on every one of their haters. As the years have gone by, time has been fairly kind to these records, with the imperfections giving the records character and making them sound much more relevant for what the current music scene is up to. Some of them may have been a little bit ahead of their time, but maybe we just needed to listen a little closer to see what was really there.
10. McCartney II - Paul McCartney
After the dissolution of Wings, Paul McCartney seemed a little bit lost creatively. Although he had been known as the force and the good time spirit behind the Beatles, his new band was starting to fall apart and his infamous drug bust in Japan certainly didn't help matters, with him being detained for a few weeks. The whole lifestyle he was leading just seemed to be too much, and the biggest way around it was for Paul to just be himself when he went into the studio.
Much like his first solo album, McCartney II is the result of Paul just messing around in a recording studio, using different electronic effects to make some wildly zany sounds at the time. Even if something like Temporary Secretary may still be hit and miss for some people, Coming Up sees Paul tapping into the sounds of a band like Talking Heads, along with the back half of the record where he puts together different instrumental sections that are reminiscent of what David Bowie was doing just a few years earlier on Low.
As much as some of Paul's critics were harsh on this record and preferred the now classic sound of Wings, McCartney II has seen a much better reappraisal over the years, with different indie bands commandeering its strange style and even catching the attention of John Lennon, who was inspired to make some new music after hearing it on the radio. Paul may have been a little bit lost trying to find his muse at this time, but his knack for writing melodies never left him in that time either.