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20 ARTISTS WHO PEAKED ON THEIR DEBUT ALBUM
Releasing a monumental debut album can be a blessing and a curse.
Many artists toil in obscurity for years before they get their shot at the big leagues.
They've had the luxury to hone their craft in private, to iron out the kinks of their sound and presentation at sparsely attended club shows before presenting their material on a global stage.
The result can be a fully realized debut album that establishes an artist's ethos and serves as a springboard for their career — the definitive starting point for any casual listener looking to dive into an artist's discography for the first time.
Sometimes, this fully articulated vision results in astronomical commercial success, such as Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, the bestselling debut in history or the diamond-selling self-titled bows from Boston or Van Halen. Other times, these debut albums sell poorly but are lauded by critics and become pivotal in the development of entire genres or scenes, such as Ramones' and New York Dolls' self-titled debuts or Television's Marquee Moon.
This type of critical and commercial success is the stuff of dreams, but when an artist gets it right the first time, it creates immense pressure for a follow-up.
Some artists take their newfound stardom in stride and continue churning out solid-to-remarkable albums at a steady clip. Others let the pressure get to them, agonizing and taking years to craft a follow-up, to diminishing returns.
In either case, it's important to remember that just because an artist's first work is their best doesn't mean the rest of their catalog isn't worthy. But it isn't a badge of shame to peak on their first go-round either. To make such an indelible mark on music history even once is an enormous honor.
20 Rock Artists Who Peaked on Their Debut Album:
✔ The Doors, 'The Doors' (1967)
Everything that made the Doors one of the most popular, captivating and enigmatic bands of their time was clear as day from the opening notes of their self-titled debut. John Densmore's jazz-leaning drums, Robby Krieger's howling blues licks and Eastern-styled drones, Ray Manzarek's urgent organ and keyboard bass, Jim Morrison's haunting poetry and sex-god posturing — all combined to form a pillar of the psych-rock evolution that sold like gangbusters off the strength of undeniable hits like "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" and "Light My Fire." World domination was imminent.
✔ The Velvet Underground, 'The Velvet Underground & Nico' (1967)
Brian Eno famously said that the Velvet Underground's debut album sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years, but "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band." Mainly recorded over four days in New York's rundown Scepter Studios, The Velvet Underground & Nico is a ramshackle, ingenious blend of art rock, proto-punk, indie rock and psychedelia. Lou Reed takes listeners on a harrowing tour through the band's version of New York, detailing drug use ("Heroin"), prostitution ("There She Goes Again") and sadomasochism ("Venus in Furs"). It sounded like nothing that was available then, and despite its countless imitators over the years, it remains an unparalleled achievement.
✔ King Crimson, 'In the Court of the Crimson King' (1969)
King Crimson drew a bold line in the sand with their debut album, crystalizing the nascent progressive rock movement with their deft blend of hard rock, folk, jazz and classical music. This kitchen-sink approach worked because the band — particularly singer and bassist Greg Lake (who'd become one-third of Emerson, Lake & Palmer), guitarist Robert Fripp and multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald — had a voracious appetite and scholarly aptitude for all genres of music. The result is an album that ping-pongs thrillingly between frantic jazz-rock explosions ("21st Century Schizoid Man”) and spacey, shapeshifting balladry ("Moonchild”). In the Court of the Crimson King was a smashing success critically and commercially, but it proved too good to last: By the following year, the lineup had already begun to disintegrate.
✔ MC5, 'Kick Out the Jams' (1969)
Recorded live over two nights at Detroit's Grande Ballroom, Kick Out the Jams captures MC5 at their most feral, setting a template for countless bands in their wake. The title track — with its infamous "Kick out the jams, motherfucker!" exhortation — is a righteous proto-punk classic, and the rest of the album follows suit with distorted guitar squalls, larynx-shredding vocals and tightrope-walking tempos. The album is rock 'n' roll boiled down to its bare essentials, and more than half a century later, its breathless intensity remains unmatched.
✔ Roxy Music, 'Roxy Music' (1972)
The opening track on Roxy Music’s debut LP, "Re-Make/Re-Model," still sounds about 50 years ahead of its time. Phil Manzanera scrapes wicked noises from his guitar; Andy Mackay honks wildly on the sax; Paul Thompson pulverizes the drum kit; Brian Eno conjures alien tones from a VCS3 synthesizer; and singer Bryan Ferry yelps like a wounded avant-glam all-star over a rollicking piano. Nothing else on Roxy Music is quite that rattling, but it's all revelatory: the oboe-fueled dark-to-light journey of "Ladytron"; the elegantly manic "2HB"; the fractured, exploratory "The Bob (Medley)." What sort of black magic is this? Hopefully, we never figure it out.
✔ Lynyrd Skynyrd, '(Pronounced 'Leh-'nerd 'Skin-'nerd')' (1973)
Lynyrd Skynyrd didn't invent southern rock, but they damn near perfected it on their masterful 1973 debut. The sextet had spent years honing these songs in clubs before hitting the studio, and (Pronounced 'Leh-'nerd 'Skin-'nerd') crackles with confidence and finesse, from the funky hard-rock strut of "I Ain't the One" and "Gimme Three Steps" to the disarming tenderness of "Tuesday's Gone" and "Simple Man." Divorced from its myriad pop-culture associations, the album-closing "Free Bird" is such a jaw-dropping display of virtuosity that it's almost infuriating to think Lynyrd Skynyrd pulled it off on their first record.
✔ New York Dolls, 'New York Dolls' (1973)
Despite his ambivalence toward the band, producer Todd Rundgren captured New York Dolls exactly as they were on their self-titled debut: loud, rude and unrepentantly sloppy. The band combines first-gen rock 'n' roll, Brill Building pop and a heaping helping of camp on the effervescent "Personality Crisis" and "Trash," with frontman David Johansen and guitarist Johnny Thunders peacocking like a zombified Mick 'n' Keef. New York Dolls is the sound of a train threatening to derail at any moment (and it quickly did), but the crude musicianship and drag-show album cover were also a defiant middle finger to the era's rampant rock snobbery and homophobia — a defiance that other bands were wise to emulate.
✔ Patti Smith, 'Horses' (1975)
Predating Ramones' self-titled debut by five months, Patti Smith's Horses became a cornerstone of the punk-rock revolution. The LP drips with primal passion, blending its minimalist, three-chord cacophony with evocative lyrics and decidedly un-punk improvisation. The result was nothing short of a cultural reset, a deliberate rejuvenation after the social upheaval and myriad musical deaths of the '60s resulted in widespread lethargy. "We all had to pull ourselves together," Smith said. "To me, that's why our record's called Horses. We had to pull the reins on ourselves to recharge ourselves. … We've gotten ourselves back together. It's time to let the horses loose again. We're ready to start moving again."
✔ Boston, 'Boston' (1976)
Boston's self-titled debut is essentially a greatest hits album and a stunning work of clarity and virtuosity from guitarist, songwriter and producer Tom Scholz, who recorded most of the eight-song LP in his apartment basement in an elaborate ruse against Epic Records. Songs like "More Than a Feeling" and "Peace of Mind" became stone-cold arena-rock classics, while "Foreplay/Long Time" and "Smokin'" dazzle with their prog-leaning instrumental showcases. With 17 million copies shifted in the U.S. alone, Boston became the bestselling debut album in history (later eclipsed by Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction). It helped usher in rock's AOR era and remains Boston's crowning achievement, despite Scholz's increasingly tortured efforts to capture lightning in a bottle once more.
✔ Ramones, 'Ramones' (1976)
The Ramones waste no time on things like subtlety or elaborate songcraft on their self-titled debut, a 29-minute volley of crash-bang power chords and sneering, shout-along vocals. Themes of drug use, suburban ennui and wanton violence pervade these 14 songs, which repurpose the sugary hooks of '60s pop groups into a high-speed sonic assault. Ramones was ground zero for the punk rock revolution, and classics like "Blitzkrieg Bop," "Beat on the Brat" and "Judy Is a Punk" make it the quartet's definitive album.
✔ Meat Loaf, 'Bat Out of Hell' (1977)
It takes a lot of guts to come out of the gate with a debut album as deliriously over-the-top as Bat Out of Hell. But really, would anything else have made sense for a Broadway singer-turned-rock star who called himself Meat Loaf? Michael Lee Aday and Jim Steinman made perfect bedfellows, the former's megawatt voice and boundless charisma giving life to the latter's super-stuffed, operatic epics. Brimming with hits like "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth," Bat Out of Hell is a sweat-drenched tour de force of pomp, virtuosity and ambition. It's no wonder Aday and Steinman returned to the well for two sequels.
✔ Television, 'Marquee Moon' (1977)
Television's debut masterpiece doesn’t fit squarely into the already broad confines of new wave — its dual-riff crossfire and slippery song structures don't share much DNA with, say, the sleek synth-pop of Duran Duran. But Marquee Moon wound up influencing just about every guitar-oriented rock band of its immediate era, led by Tom Verlaine's strained voice and surrealist poetry. None of their admirers could ever hope to accurately ape such a unique sound: Take a song like "Friction," which sounds like a drugged-up blues-rock band jamming with a jazz-rock group in a nightmarish roadside bar. The peak, of course, is the 10-minute title epic, a maze of jagged rhythms and moonlit, exploratory guitar solos.
✔ The Cars, 'The Cars' (1978)
No doubt if you're measuring sheer thrills on a hook-by-hook level, the Cars reached an impressive peak on their first LP: The opening run of "Good Times Roll," "My Best Friend's Girl" and "Just What I Needed" is transcendent, besting any new wave trilogy you could throw up in comparison. But The Cars is more nuanced — and, often, weirder — than it gets credit for, showcasing the band's hard rock chops (the guitar solo on "Don't Cha Stop") and underrated art-rock inclinations (the nervy riffs of "I'm in Touch With Your World," the climactic sax solo on "All Mixed Up") as the LP unfolds.
✔ Devo, 'Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!' (1978)
Devo's debut album sounds like it was beamed in from another planet, combining the abrasiveness of DIY punk with the acerbic wit and pop smarts of new wave. Songs like "Uncontrollable Urge," "Mongoloid" and "Jocko Homo" are so aggressively off-the-wall that they sound like direct rebukes of the bland pop-rock fluff dominating the airwaves at the time, while still being outrageously catchy in their own right. Then, of course, there's Devo's deconstructed cover of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," still one of the ballsiest performances to appear on any major-label debut.
Warner Bros.
✔ Van Halen, 'Van Halen' (1978)
Rock 'n' roll guitar playing has two distinct eras: before Van Halen and after Van Halen. With his two-handed tapping, harmonic squeals and bottomless dive-bombs, namesake guitarist Eddie Van Halen revolutionized the medium just as Jimi Hendrix had done a decade earlier. But Van Halen wouldn't have been the world-conquering smash that it was without its brilliant, pop-savvy songwriting, singer David Lee Roth's consummate showmanship or the ironclad rhythm section of bassist Michael Anthony and drummer Alex Van Halen. The band reached similarly lofty heights on the moody Fair Warning and the blockbuster 1984, but in terms of zeitgeist-defining impact, nothing came close to Van Halen.
✔ Pretenders, 'Pretenders' (1979)
Exuding confidence from start to finish, the Pretenders' debut got in fans' faces and demanded respect. "I’m special, so special, I’ve gotta have some of your attention, give it to me," leader Chrissie Hynde sings on "Brass in Pocket," one of the LP's best singles. Hynde's vocals are unpolished and glorious, while James Honeyman-Scott's guitar riffs arrive one after another, each sharper than the last. The band's hard-rock swagger gets balanced out with more vulnerable songs like "Private Life" and "Lovers of Today," making Pretenders a definitive new wave record, stating up-front that there are no rules.
✔ Ozzy Osbourne, 'Blizzard of Ozz' (1980)
Ozzy Osbourne's career seemed dead in the water after his ouster from Black Sabbath. But with the help of manager and future wife Sharon Arden and guitar wizard Randy Rhoads, he pulled himself back from the brink with Blizzard of Ozz. Classics like "I Don't Know," "Flying High Again" and "Crazy Train" put a poppier, more melodic spin on the genre, while "Mr. Crowley" provided the creepy, occult storytelling for which Black Sabbath had become known. Blizzard of Ozz is equally renowned for revitalizing Osbourne's career and introducing the world to Rhoads, who put an indelible stamp on the genre in just a few short years before his death at age 25.
✔ Dio, 'Holy Diver' (1983)
Ronnie James Dio was poised for a solo breakout after successful stints in Rainbow and Black Sabbath, and he staked his claim for metal royalty with Holy Diver. The singer delivers thunderous, operatic vocal performances on the majestic title track and pummeling "Straight Through the Heart," while hotshot guitarist Vivian Campbell dazzles on "Stand Up and Shout" and the epic "Rainbow in the Dark." Pound for pound, Holy Diver is Dio's strongest batch of songs, and it proved he didn't need to hitch his wagon to anyone to become a star.
✔ Guns N' Roses, 'Appetite for Destruction' (1987)
The classic Guns N' Roses lineup — Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler — created a hard-rock alchemy on Appetite for Destruction that comes along once in a blue moon. The album is a relentlessly depraved dispatch from the gutters of Hollywood Boulevard, where the quintet subsisted while collecting inspiration for streetwise punk-metal anthems "Welcome to the Jungle," "Nightrain" and "Out Ta Get Me." McKagan and Adler's loose-limbed boogie, Slash and Stradlin's serpentine riffs and Rose's alleycat howl coalesced into the definitive Sunset Strip hard rock album and the bestselling debut in history, with more than 18 million sales in the U.S. alone. Decades later, GNR are still chasing its elusive high.
✔ Pearl Jam, 'Ten' (1991)
Released less than a month before Nirvana's world-changing Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten initially flew under the radar but eventually came to provide an alternative to the alternative. Whereas Kurt Cobain and his band served up dour, ultra-distorted punk-pop, Pearl Jam delivered chest-beating arena-rock that owed a far greater debt to '70s classic rock than their peers. Breathless rockers like "Once" and "Even Flow" hinge on Mike McCready's blistering lead guitar, while slow-burning ballads "Alive" and "Black" showcase Eddie Vedder's bleeding-heart, marble-mouthed vocals — a style often parodied but never replicated with the same sincerity. Pearl Jam would greatly expand their sonic palette on future releases, but Ten remains their definitive statement.
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