10 Terrible Rock Bands With One Incredible Album
Pieces of Genius.
Not everyone who makes it to the top of the charts is necessarily going to be the next version of the Beatles. Sometimes it comes down to being in the right place at the right time, and some artists have reached the pinnacle of success and have become the laughing stock of the entire rock scene. That doesn't mean that they were always bad though.
Every musician has to have at least one good song in their arsenal, and these acts proved to have more than a bit of potential for a few albums. Instead of just being a fluke, these were the albums that gave us hope that these bands were more than just a bunch of kids who somehow managed to latch onto a gimmick. As time went on though, these definitely didn't pay off, with one album after the next either getting too boring to take seriously or too embarrassing to listen to for more than a few minutes.
In fact, the existence of these albums just manages to sting that much more when you see what these acts have done through the years. Since we know what you're capable of, why are you deciding to just continue on making the kind of mediocre music time and time again? Then again, they got it right once, and we'll happily take what we can get.
10. Yourself Or Someone Like You - Matchbox 20
It would be a stretch to call Matchbox 20 one of the worst bands in history. By the time they actually got around to reaching the top of the charts, their kind of adult alternative post-grunge was getting far too sanitized for anyone to really take seriously anymore. Once you see how bad the later bands like Lifehouse could get, you will have so much more respect for Yourself or Someone Like You.
That's because this album doesn't really seem to be going for your traditional post-grunge hangups. Instead of copying the kind of tried and true formulas of someone like Stone Temple Pilots, there's a lot more pop smarts behind a lot of these songs, especially when paired with the nice rasp of Rob Thomas. As much as they may have been played into the ground, songs like Push are going to be remembered just for how catchy they are.
This would prove to be a bit of first album syndrome though, with the next album showing Matchbox 20 really starting to run out of ideas and Rob Thomas later reaching the top of the charts either on his own or with Santana. Though this ended up being the high point of their career by a longshot, you'll still have the chorus to 3 AM stuck in your head until the day you die.