(Credits: Far Out / RCA)
No artist approaches their craft in the exact same way. For as many people try to hit the ground running right out of the gate, there are still many who try to keep things subdued before kicking the door down later in their careers. While there are pieces of brilliance scattered throughout the early years of artists like Pink Floyd, it would take them a few years before they had solid-gold classics under their belt.
Then again, it’s hard to quantify a classic when there are a lot of singles to choose from. Some of the most celebrated acts in popular music usually had tunes that were made for the singles market, so the lion’s share of their albums would be a grab bag of single cuts rather than a classic that held together as something coherent.
When each artist found their footing, though, they left everyone else in the dust the minute they found their groove. Although it’s a rough ride going through each discography chronologically and seeing odds and ends, these were the moments where it was impossible to ignore the quality anymore.
That’s not to say that everything before the acclaimed records was bad by any stretch of the imagination. There were fleeting glimpses of brilliance laced throughout the first albums, but the minute that they landed on these records, the small spark that they had in the beginning quickly erupted into forest fire.
10 artists who waited years before making a classic:
10. Pyromania – Def Leppard
Most hair metal bands were almost meant to be disposable. As much as people liked the idea of listening to songs about partying all night long, it normally takes all of three seconds for people to realise that there wasn’t much substance behind the massively teased hair and a handful of knockoff AC/DC riffs. Def Leppard always had more to offer than the typical rock and roll outfit, though, and by the time the 1980s kicked in properly, they finally had a sound down to a crystallised sheen on Pyromania.
Looking through the first records they made, it was clear that they were still finding their feet to some extent. On Through the Night still had the makings of a good record, but that, along with High ‘n’ Dry, saw them putting a bit too much hard rock into their sound. While their sophomore effort did introduce Mutt Lange behind the production board, Pyromania had everything that a rock fan could have wanted.
Here fans got a helping of unadulterated hard rock but with a bit more sheen behind it, almost like if Queen were asked to sing an AC/DC song. While each record beforehand took the pieces of British hard rock and pushed it a step further, Pyromania is the rare breed of album that’s both a product of the hair metal scene and also one of the most pop-friendly rock releases ever made.
9. Private Dancer – Tina Turner
Given her history in the music industry, no one would fault Tina Turner if she never wanted to make music again. She had seen success as a singles act with her husband, Ike, but after leaving him for being an abusive piece of trash, her career as a solo artist seemed to be waning, usually riding off the back of goodwill she had towards her roles in Tommy and her past success with Ike. After years of trying to make it on her own, she introduced herself to the 1980s with one of the greatest career resurrections ever seen.
Although the singles market had known of Turner for years, Private Dancer was practically a mission statement for what her career would be as an album artist. She had gone through the dark side of life at far too young, and by breaking herself off from her past, tracks like ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’, and the title track may as well have been autobiographical pieces of what her real life was like behind closed doors.
In that respect, Private Dancer isn’t only her first classic album as a solo star but also a concept record of everything that brought her to the top. She had spent years singing tracks like ‘Proud Mary’ and ‘River Deep Mountain High’, but after escaping the torture of Ike, she showed that she could be even stronger if she was pushed hard enough.
8. Damn the Torpedoes – Tom Petty
When Tom Petty debuted, most people didn’t realise what the term ‘heartland rock’ even meant yet. Most people were still coming off of the hard rock boom that had happened once Led Zeppelin took over the world, and while Petty was still indebted to the sounds of The Byrds, he could still change with the times when boasting a leather jacket on his debut record. Each of those records was a breeding ground, though, and once Jimmy Iovine got involved, Petty turned the Heartbreakers into a well-oiled machine.
Considering the primitive sound of their early tracks, Damn the Torpedoes is one of the tightest sets of songs that Petty had ever made. Since he had been known for making traditional rock and roll tunes, this was the extra coat of polish that he needed to get on the radio, like turning ‘Don’t Do Me Like That’ into a borderline R&B song and spending 100 takes trying to get ‘Refugee’ exactly right.
While most people would rather not go through a legal dispute with their record company to walk away with a classic, even Petty admitted that this was by far his finest work when he began touring for it. ‘American Girl’ and ‘Listen to Her Heart’ was the proof of concept, but once Damn the Torpedoes, the world got a good look at the rough-and-tumble Southern kid with a heart of gold.
7. 1999 – Prince
Some of the best bands of all time usually need a few records before finding out what they’re capable of. It’s all about working with what you have, and when the production value is the cost equivalent of a half-decent sandwich, then it should come as no surprise why those demos don’t go down in history that often. But Prince didn’t really need a full band to prove himself as a rock icon, and after becoming a fixture of the Minneapolis scene, 1999 brought that sound to the rest of the world.
Because looking at the Prince records before this, there was always something them back. Outside of his debut For You being a little rough around the edges, it was going to be difficult for any casual fan to slip on anything off of Dirty Mind or Controversy, especially if someone tried to show their parents songs like ‘Sister’ or ‘Head’.
By hiding his promiscuous side slightly, 1999 became the kind of double record that most artists dream of making, with ‘The Purple One’ toeing the line between rock and roll, R&B, funk and anything else in between on tracks like ‘Little Red Corvette’ or ‘Delirious’. 1999 is one of the bolder ways any artist has stepped into the mainstream, but it wouldn’t have been Prince if it wasn’t that ambitious, now would it?
6. Good Kid Maad City – Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick Lamar’s discography is still one of the most airtight in hip-hop history. Although some specific tunes don’t work as well as others, very few artists can put out music with that much heart and still find ways to twist themselves into different shapes for whatever next project they’re working on. It’s almost expected that the first mixtapes would be a bit patchy, but when Lamar decided to tell the story of his hometown, Good Kid Maad City turned into one of the greatest projects that the 2010s ever spit out.
Whereas Section 80 and Overly Dedicated worked fine as projects on their own, it felt like an incubation period for Lamar half the time. Some tunes may have been more about the flow than others, but across all of this album’s 12 tracks, Lamar is finally in his element, telling the story of him trying to stay on the straight and narrow while having to deal with the ugliness surrounding his town like ‘Maad City’ and ‘The Art of Peer Pressure’.
But making an album all about breaking out of one’s home wouldn’t work nearly as well if it wasn’t woven together with love. Lamar is still enormously proud of where he comes from, and even if he knew that it was a bit rough around the edges, this musical odyssey was the point where he started to understand what it meant to be the voice of the people.
5. Dookie – Green Day
No punk band is necessarily looking to be the greatest band in the world. Half of them are lucky to be able to make something reasonably coherent half the time, and if it happens to resonate with many people, that’s only a happy by-product. Billie Joe Armstrong always had aspirations beyond punk rock, though, and despite its association with shit, Dookie was the first time that Green Day turned their songs into solid gold.
Because listening back to their days on Lookout! Records, they still had to be put through their paces. Drummer John Kiffmeyer didn’t really have the kind of chops that Tre Cool played with so naturally, but even Kerplunk saw moments where Cool struggled to find himself amongst anthems like ‘Christie Road’ or ‘2000 Light Years Away’.
While Armstrong considers their second record to be a personal favourite, Dookie is where pop-punk got its signature sound, from the snotty delivery to Cool playing the perfect snare rolls to keep everything snappy on ‘Longview’ and ‘Basket Case’. Although Kerplunk does have a special place in Green Day fans’ hearts, it only takes one listen to the Dookie version of ‘Welcome to Paradise’ compared to the original to see how far they had come in a few years.
4. White Blood Cells – The White Stripes
Towards the end of the 1990s, rock and roll became a bit too much of a pity party. Although a lot of bands of the nu-metal variety had some genuine things to be pissed off about, it can get a bit difficult trying to take someone like Fred Durst seriously when having the cadence of a high school bully trying to force someone off a swing set. It was time for the genre to get over itself, and despite Jack and Meg White starting in the late 1990s, White Blood Cells was the first time they had a spotless record from cover to cover.
While the garage roots of The White Stripes were hampered a little bit by having the gall to work in an actual studio, ‘Hotel Yorba’ and ‘Dead Leaves and Dirty Ground’ are classic examples of what could be done within the confines of a duo. Even when they don’t have that much to work with, songs like ‘Little Room’ have no business being as good as they are, especially when all the music takes place on a bass drum and a tambourine.
Whereas ‘Hello Operator’ showed potential for what the band could do, White Blood Cells took those limitations and blew them wide open. No matter how few members were in the band, The White Stripes had developed a sound that could be even more powerful than a band with five members.
3. Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen
From day one, Bruce Springsteen was never comfortable playing songs that weren’t from his soul. He had known what it was like to be a songwriter for a while, but no matter how hard he tried to find his voice, he couldn’t escape the associations with everyone from Bob Dylan to Van Morrison along the way. After working things out on his first records, Born to Run is where the world first got introduced to ‘The Boss’.
Whereas Greetings from Asbury Park had the makings of a classic hit, Born to Run was the first time the characters in his songs actually felt real. From the bombast of the E Street Band to how Springsteen claimed to make his guitar talk, every tune on the record felt like a massive operatic tune, even managing to make compact tunes like ‘Night’ roar with energy within three minutes.
More than being a solid record from back to front, Born to Run became the moment where people started to relate to the working man’s side of rock and roll outside of the Led Zeppelins of the world. Robert Plant could pretend to be a ‘Golden God’ all he wanted, but nothing got any more rock and roll than a mild-mannered kid from Jersey with a song in his heart and a guitar at his hip.
2. Hunky Dory – David Bowie
Half of David Bowie’s discography was about mixing things up on every record. No matter how many times he went down a particular creative road, it didn’t take him long to get bored and then move on to something entirely different based on how he was feeling. So despite the unintentional hilarity of his debut record’s flirtation with vaudeville tunes, Bowie found a road that suited him much better on Hunky Dory.
‘Space Oddity’ had already flirted with the idea of him being an alien from another planet, but before Ziggy Stardust crashlanded on Earth, this record showed him getting a taste for that zany style of rock. Outside of having classics like ‘Changes’ and ‘Life on Mars?’, the deep cuts are where Bowie makes his true mark, whether that was him unashamedly pulling from The Velvet Underground on ‘Queen Bitch’ or working in elegant ballads like ‘Quicksand’.
While Hunky Dory stands as the first truly great Bowie album, this was practically a teaser for what was to come. This was the first warning sign, and when the rock and roll messiah spread his wings, the rest of the world was in for multiple years’ worth of glam-rock grandeur that was to follow.
1. Meddle – Pink Floyd
The entire road to Pink Floyd making prog-rock masterpieces sounds unbelievably sad when you remove the music. For all the great music that they could make together, it was clear that Syd Barrett could never have stuck around to make the next few records, so bringing in David Gilmour was the next best thing they could do. While The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was nice enough for what it was, it wasn’t until they hit Meddle that the group transformed into the band that we know and love.
The reason why Piper doesn’t really work in this context is because it’s practically a different band. Barrett had been the leader at that point, and since most of the group had tried to soldier on after his departure, albums like Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother all have massive dips in quality where everything falls apart. The minute ‘One of These Days’ starts, the band somehow finds a way to blend their swagger and experimental side in one fell swoop, whether that meant working on a bluesy tune or making ‘San Tropez’ into the laid-back rock tune that the British music scene had never heard before.
But ‘Echoes’ was the true benchmark for what the group would turn into. They had spent years twisting rock and roll into different shapes and sizes, but when listening to that final epic closing out the album, fans got the first taste of what Dark Side of the Moon had to offer a few years later.
Related Topics
