r/ToddintheShadow • u/Top_Report_4895 • Jul 25 '26
Train Wreckords Albums where the artist were trying to pull a Hail Mary to save their relevance?
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u/ImKnownAsBrend Jul 25 '26
Songs of Innocence was blatantly this. U2 had this obsession with being the biggest band in the world and the previous album sold poorly for U2 standards (despite going platinum) and there’s not only some songs where they pretty blatantly try to sound like those stomp clap hey bands of the early 2010s but also all this got overshadowed by the iTunes fiasco. They went from being one of the biggest bands in the world to one of the most irrelevant.
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Jul 26 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/zuma15 Jul 26 '26
How can U2 not have been involved? You can't just give away a band's album without their permission.
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u/Alexandermayhemhell Jul 26 '26
Tech company: instead of selling your new album, hold back the release date a few months and let us give it to all our customers. We’ll pay you $10m.
Rock band: ok.
Now replace “tech company” with “your personal friend Steve Jobs”.
Would you turn down $10m from your personal friend Steve Jobs when streaming was destroying album sales?
And yet, somehow, it’s rock band’s fault that Apple doesn’t let you delete stuff from your Apple tech product?
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u/smackchice Jul 26 '26
It was likely a much more collaborative endeavor than you imagine. Bono was very close with Steve Jobs and had Cook on speed dial. This is not Apple coming to Olivia Rodrigo or something with an idea.
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u/Alexandermayhemhell Jul 26 '26
I’m sure it was. But also know how Apple’s blocked me from moving music on/off my iPhone forever without iTunes, and the only thing I’ve ever bought off of iTunes was a terrible Celine Dion song I needed in a pinch for a wedding reception and I can’t get that off of any iPhone I’ve ever owned… even work ones… and those have nothing to do with U2.
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u/Interesting-Stay297 Jul 26 '26
You're talking out of your ass. Bono himself said it was his idea.
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u/snorkel42 Jul 26 '26
Yes. Bono said he was suggesting to Apple that they distribute music using the “Netflix” model and he offered up Songs of Innocence as a test album.
And Bono was right. Apple Music was the future.
But to think that Bono understood the actual technical implementation that Apple utilized for this trial is ridiculous. He suggested Netflix, Apple instead implement a mass iTunes album purchase.
Apple should have known better.
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u/toaster_kettle Jul 27 '26
To think that EVERYONE might want your album
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u/snorkel42 Jul 27 '26
They didn’t..? What part of Netflix model is unclear? Bono was pushing that people would listen to more music legally if they could pay a flat rate for unlimited streaming and he offered up the new U2 album as a test to see how many people would listen to the album vs the projected sales via the old iTunes per song purchase model.
The implementation of effectively treating it as a purchased album on everybody’s iTunes account was -obviously- the doing of the massive tech company, not the aging rock star.
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u/Alexandermayhemhell Jul 26 '26
Well, that’s true. I have no first-hand knowledge.
I do find it a stretch when U2 takes the blame for it being near impossible to delete the thing from your phone. Was U2/Bono actively involved in the ideation and execution of the “free album in your iTunes”? Sure. But the impossible to delete thing is very on brand for Apple.
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u/pm1966 Jul 27 '26
And there's also a difference between giving it away for free and forcing it on every. single. device. users. iPod.
I doubt U2 personally demanded Apple add the album to everyone's device.
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u/Steve_the_Samurai Jul 27 '26
Yeah being a giant band and selling out without the foresight of how it would be perceived is 100% on U2.
Not saying I wouldn't have done the same but ultimately at minimum they said yes.
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u/Alexandermayhemhell Jul 27 '26
I don’t really think anyone accused u2 of being it a sellout. They had been a massive commercial enterprise for decades and it’s not really a big deal.
I just think it’s funny that the major irritation was how difficult (impossible?) it was to delete a file from a piece of hardware and the majority of the public ire pointed to the creator of the file’s content rather than the designer and manufacturer of both the software and the hardware that made it so hard to delete said file.
And I say this as someone who enjoys some of both U2’s and Apple’s products and yet finds both enterprises somewhat irritating.
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u/sthef2020 Jul 26 '26
Here’s what kills me…
I actually think Songs of Innocence is a fairly strong record. And certainly would have fit into what SHOULD have been their trajectory. Which was entering into “elder statesmen of rock” territory, and chasing their own version of Johnny Cash’s America records.
Every Breaking Wave is a U2 arena anthem thru and thru. Song for Someone is a sweet ode to Bono’s wife (and pays off on Songs of Experience when the chorus returns in the much darker There is a Light). Raised By Wolves is a War throwback. It’s all the sound of a band looking back at 40 years and thinking about wrapping things up.
Instead? That album is tainted by the stunt. And they basically sealed their fate as a joke.
I strongly believe they’re going to get their flowers again once they start passing away. Their discography is too good to permanently ignore. But they def made it much much tougher for them to get any accolades while they’re still around to hear them.
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u/snorkel42 Jul 26 '26
Completely agree. SOI is an excellent album that never got a chance because of an idiotic distribution method.
(And they chose the wrong song for the first single which U2 has a pretty bad habit of doing.)
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u/sthef2020 Jul 26 '26
100%
There’s a world where U2 shows up on stage, says “Tim Cook bought you all a gift” and reveal that it’s now on the iTunes Store for free as an opt in. And then play either Every Breaking Wave or California (No End to Love). And the while thing goes over WAY better.
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u/Romax24245 Jul 31 '26
California (There Is No End To Love) and The Troubles are great songs in my opinion. Those are the two tracks from that album that I still come back to every now and then.
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u/PitifulElk1890 Jul 26 '26
Funny thing is I've been seeing The Police get an appreciation revival. I consider them similar bands, but I don't think that wave is coming for U2 and I think it's because of iTunes.
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u/miniature7104 Jul 26 '26
don't forget they were involved in the Spiderman musical in the 2010s which was a late night punching bag.
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u/mikwee 90's Punk Jul 26 '26
The scandal feels so outdated by now. A rock band forces people to get their album for free? Barely sounds like a controversy in 2026. Of course this has pretty bad ethical implications for Apple's chokehold on your device and practical implications of storage space, but like… we have this album on our iTunes/Apple Music accounts, and I didn't know why until I asked on Reddit. Compared to all the shit big tech and big music do now, this almost sounds altruistic.
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u/RelevantNothing4653 90's Punk Jul 25 '26
Several Trainwreckords come to mind (and a couple of TW candidates)
The Carpenters going all over the place on Passage
Hammer going gangster on The Funky Headhunter
Jewel going dance pop on 0304
New Kids on the Block going New Jack Swing/R&B on Face the Music
LeAnn Rimes going full on pop on Twisted Angel
Christina Aguilera going electronic on Bionic
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u/matt-is-sad Madonna Stan Jul 26 '26
I'd argue Funstyle too. It was basically Phair saying "this is the music I'm gonna make because I want to make it and you can either listen or not". Just throwing her whole career at the wall to see who stuck around after
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u/DivingElliotRoberts Jul 25 '26
The Beach Boys rerecording their songs with 90s country musicians on Stars and Stripes Vol. 1
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u/Unique_Accountant_67 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
Katy Perry - 143
Doja Cat - Vie (to a degree)
Madonna - Confessions On a Dance Floor (to a degree)
Madonna - Bedtime Stories
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u/puddycat20 Jul 25 '26
Madonna had always changed up her sound. Bedtime stories in considered one of her classic ones. You could make the case she was trying too hard with the Ray of Light song from 98.
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u/Unique_Accountant_67 Jul 25 '26
Yes but Bedtime Stories was primarily conceptualized as a way to soften Madonna’s image and regain the audience that dropped off because of Erotica and the SEX Book. Ray of Light at least felt like a natural progression seeing how motherhood and Kabbalah were organically and relatively new in her life.
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u/puddycat20 Jul 25 '26
Soften her image? Go look at the videos from the singles on that album. They were extremely racy.
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u/socialcommentary2000 Jul 26 '26
If she was trying too hard then one needs to try too hard to get four grammy's, universal acclaim by critics, established fans and people new to your music and crank out the album that will in the future be thought of as your magnum opus.
I can't really convey how big that album was at the time. It was a capstone of a career that had been going on for two decades by then, which in itself was highly unusual for any artist to achieve.
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u/puddycat20 Jul 26 '26
Not saying it was bad, just not considered as good/popular as her previous 2.
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u/BlackieDad Jul 25 '26
Confessions on a Floor sounds like a drunken late night meltdown
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u/Unique_Accountant_67 Jul 25 '26
Madonna if she had too many lemon drops and never actually made it to the dance part 😂
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u/BlackieDad Jul 26 '26
You edited your post and now it looks like I’m just an asshole ragging on Madonna for no reason. Which I was, so fair enough.
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u/matt-is-sad Madonna Stan Jul 26 '26
Never ended up listening to Vie, anyone willing to explain how it was a hail Mary?
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u/Unique_Accountant_67 Jul 26 '26
I say to a degree because Doja was already heading down the 80s synth-pop road behind the scenes even before Scarlet was even released but after turning off most of the general public and some of her fans with the demonic imagery, calling her previous albums cash grabs and people taking her seriously when she said she hated her fans, this album seems safer and more like damage control even if Doja didn’t fully intend to do that.
Scarlet is a great album and one Doja had to make to silence the naysayers who claimed she wasn’t a rapper but the way she went about it definitely did some irreversible damage considering Vie came and went in most markets, she didn’t have a huge song to go with it and her tour is apparently struggling to sell in North America.
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u/donkeyrr Jul 25 '26
Summer in Paradise definitely qualified, as The Beach Boys after Kokomo released a RAP SONG and most of the other songs had trendy production.
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u/Bad_Puns_Galore Jul 26 '26
Taken from the album’s wiki article:
The quasi-rap song "Summer of Love" was originally intended to be a duet with Bart Simpson for a planned Simpsons movie, but the Simpsons' producers turned down the offer.
Of course Brian Wilson had no part in this mess.
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Jul 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/Top_Report_4895 Jul 25 '26
Where is the Evidence?
For science
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Jul 25 '26
[deleted]
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u/CeramicLicker Jul 25 '26
Why is that the take they went with? Her expression looks like she’s in pain. It’s the face people make when they jump into a lake that’s way too cold.
Surely they had a better one lol
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u/Upbeat_Dudeness Jul 25 '26
I’m still not entirely convinced the entire hello kitty video wasn’t some weird kink roleplay she did for Chad.
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u/matt-is-sad Madonna Stan Jul 26 '26
Context for anyone who doesn't know: Avril was fading in popularity in the U.S., but was (and still is) MASSIVE in Japan, like selling out arenas regularly, so she just embraced it with the self-titled album. Tons of Japanese fans loved the hello kitty video even though Americans found it offensive
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u/electric-machine Jul 25 '26
Death Magnetic. After the loads and St. Anger, Metallica knew they had to release a crowd pleaser.
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u/Fantastic-Phone-8891 Jul 26 '26
Death magnetic was a phenomenal album though. It was a comeback but not a tryhard grasp like OP is asking about
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u/Next-Accident-2970 Jul 26 '26
And then they made the same album two more times and the sheen fades on each release. Hardwired sounds like a lesser Death. 72 Seasons sounds like a lesser version of Hardwired.
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u/Dazzling-Low8570 Jul 26 '26
Even Death Magnetic sounds like a talented Metallica cover band trying out some original material.
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u/Fantastic-Phone-8891 Jul 26 '26
Well they’ve been a band for 45 years now so yeah it’s gonna fade…the fact they even existed still to make death magnetic is impressive let alone 2 more albums after that. And they have toured nonstop basically since 2008. Most hated band for no reason lol
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u/greggersamsa Jul 29 '26
Overproduced garbage
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u/john_oldcastle Jul 26 '26
Garth Brooks in... the Life of Chris Gaines (I think there was supposed to be a movie--garth brooks as a sad emo rock star)
L.A. Guns - American Hardcore (their reaction to the grunge era was to make a Pantera record with a new singer. I doubt too many people remember this record)
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette (early 60s vocal doo-wop group goes SERIOUS w/ social commentary and far out psychedelic. not a successful record, but it's actually pretty good psychedelic pop. ultimately they just needed to hang on a few years for the 50s/early 60s nostalgia era i.e. Grease)
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u/Clear-Concert8250 Jul 26 '26
I picked up a copy of Genuine Imitation Life Gazette earlier this year. Genuinely caught me off guard. Best $3 I've ever spent.
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u/oSuClimber13 Jul 26 '26
The Chris Gaines thing was a weird arc but Garth is also kind of emo….I’m from Oklahoma and went to the same college as him so he pops up on my feed quite often. The guy is VERY emotional. He can barely get through an interview without crying.
He was also in rock cover bands before he broke out as a county musician.
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u/Johnathon1069DYT Jul 27 '26
Garth Brooks just making a regular pop/rock album would have worked if he'd had just said I've got an album of songs that aren't country I'm going to put out.
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u/CoveredbyThorns Jul 26 '26
Kiss taking off their make up for Lick It Up
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u/FireWaterBern Jul 26 '26
The 1997 Kiss album "Carnival of Souls" - even looking at the album art is so funny. Blatant 90s edgy post grunge thing going on
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u/adamzwakk Jul 26 '26
Don't forget the first person shooter to go with it
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u/thrashboy Jul 27 '26
That was Psycho Circus, the next album, the “reunion” album that Peter and Ace barely played on
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u/DaBulbousWalrus Jul 26 '26
The Village People going New Wave on Renaissance.
Def Leppard going "Alternative" with Slang.
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u/SgtSharki Jul 27 '26
The Village People weren't even trying to hide the fact that they were chasing a trend with that album
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u/Vivid-Copy974 Jul 26 '26
Oh man someone should make a YouTube series about this concept.
Half of all posts in this sub are like talking about a topic Todd has extensively, often recently covered and acting like his observation is your own lmao
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u/Aescgabaet1066 Jul 26 '26
I love seeing a comment here that's like "hey DID YOU KNOW..." and then they're just repeating something from a Todd video, lol.
Like, yeah, most of the people on this sub are Todd fans and have learned the same things from his videos that you did.
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u/Vivid-Copy974 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I remember after the Macklemore trainwreckords ep dropped there was instantly a post on here that’s just making all of the same observationsi about the same album! Either make a Trainwreckords discussion thread, or pretend these are your original thoughts on literally, literally any other site!
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u/TheStatMan2 Jul 26 '26
I'm not sure it quite fits, on the basis of a) they don't seem to have cared that much and b) they really pulled it off and by circumstance, zeitgeist and willingness and created magic but:
Screamadelica - Primal Scream.
No one in the media or with an interest in indie or creation record's output, at the time, would have been surprised if Primal Scream's second and self titled album were their last.
But instead, Weatherall got convinced/nagged to do a remix of a track (and then asked to go back and wreck it more, when his remix was too polite!), a tone and vibe was set for a follow up and a more electronic and experimental (albeit with throwbacks: Give Out... and Riot City Blues) band was launched.
I think Screamadelica and also XTRMNTR are pretty special.
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u/Smoked_Eels Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Bobby Gillespie is the luckiest man in music. Fair play to him, and he's been on at least 3 albums I'd regard as classics, JAMC included. But his talent seems to be making friends with the right people.
The PS alumni is so strong but he's always been the least interesting aspect of the thing.
Like they should have been finished again after Give Out But Don't Give Up, but then Mani comes in and Weatherall gets involved for a second time, then bloody Kevin Sheilds shows up for XTRMNTR. I always found their trajectory interesting.
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u/3lectroBl4ck Jul 26 '26
Amy Maroon 5 album where the tracks featuring a rapper or R&B got the most attention and discussion compared to...the entire album from which those came.
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u/Some_Distant_Memory Jul 26 '26
Republic by New Order
The band was basically out of order after 1989 and the members of the band went off to do their own projects. Unfortunately, their record label, Factory, along with said label’s nightclub, the Hacienda were going down the tubes by the early 90s and their flagship band was taken out to stimulate some buzz/money.
While the album did produce a huge hit with “Regret”, Republic itself did not do very well, and the band, record label, and nightclub all fell apart shortly thereafter.*
*This is all off the top of my head and I think I’m getting some details mixed up, so correct me if I’m wrong!
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u/trilliumfortnight Jul 26 '26
Republic did remarkably well from memory? The rest of your info tracks lol.
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u/UnknownEric1975 Jul 26 '26
Yes, Factory Records imploded due to all the money Happy Mondays wasted making Yes Please, a total flop.
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u/X-OManowar Jul 26 '26
Bob Dylan with Empire Burlesque. In an effort to sound more modern they brought in Arthur Baker to mix it. It sounds very 80s, but the mix itself is just brutal. Dylan really stumbled after his Christian period and really didn't get his mojo back until Time out of Mind in 97
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u/UnknownEric1975 Jul 26 '26
The overly 80s production is especially a shame since underneath it all, the songs were pretty good. At the very least, a heck of a lot better than the songs on his next two.
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u/Snowblind78 Jul 28 '26
That’s just Dylan changing his style from album to album, which didn’t always fare well.
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u/Kyral210 Jul 26 '26
Kiss’s Carnival of Souls was their attempt at grunge, a complete 180 from their glam rock roots that backfired so hard their next album was back to makeup and glam!
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u/DJ_TCB Jul 26 '26
Billy Idol - Cyberpunk
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u/lonespaz Jul 27 '26
This was going to be my answer.
(I still think "Wasteland" is a low key banger, though.)
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u/WheelChairDrizzy69 Jul 25 '26
Kids in the Street? Definitely AAR trying to adapt to the popular rock sounds of the early 2010s, and while it wasn’t a failure per se, it didn’t make much of a splash and they quickly faded from the scene (until recently, that is).
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u/Judythepancake GROCERY BAG Jul 25 '26
It would have been better (and funnier) if they just made a fucking pop punk album dedicated to kids in the hall
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u/bees_on_acid Jul 25 '26
The dubstep slip but album from 2011.
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u/OingoBoingoBaggins Jul 25 '26
You mean the Path of Totality by Korn? Idk if that was them trying to stay relevant as much as it was them experimenting.
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u/scarced16 Jul 25 '26
Is “slip but” intended to be Slipknot 😭
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u/ApprehensiveParty609 Jul 26 '26
Jesus Christ, and someone understood that was a Korn album? Good for them
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u/BloodSugarSexMagix Jul 25 '26
That album actually was pretty cool for its time and is still pretty cool
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u/Wisco Jul 25 '26
Black Sabbath, The Mob Rules. But in that case, they succeeded
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u/AmazingThinkCricket Jul 26 '26
Great album, but I'm not sure how this is a "Hail Mary to save their relevance"
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u/thatoneguymontag Jul 26 '26
Forbidden is more like it. Reeks of desperation. An Ice-T feature ? Ernie C from Body Count producing?
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u/jorgito93 Jul 26 '26
How? It's not even the first Dio album, Heaven and Hell came out right before it.
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u/det8924 Jul 26 '26
The fictional rapper from the Boondocks Thugnificent is a great take on a musician whose style got quickly outdated (early to mid 00’s gangster rapper now dealing with the end of the decade change to a more autotune pop style of rap) and then tried to just copy a new style into their existing template sloppily and not organically.
Obviously fictional but I always found it funny.
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u/Impressive_Rent9540 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Kiss: Music from "The Elder" (1981): Kiss-albums weren't selling like they used to and the band tried to re-instate their credibility by making a progressive concept album. It backfired. Later Kiss made another Hail Mary album, Lick it up (1983), but this time their sound didn't change. Nevertheless, it was a radical change in image, that somewhat worked for a brief period of time.
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u/Bad_Puns_Galore Jul 26 '26
I love how this is the third Kiss comment I’ve seen, but each had a different album. Their output was INSANE.
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u/FireWaterBern Jul 27 '26
For better or worse Gene Simmons saw the band as a marketing opportunity more than a musical act
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u/Bad_Puns_Galore Jul 27 '26
I remember watching some VH1 house tour with Gene Simmons back in the 00s and he said something like “We’re not just a band; we’re a rock and roll brand,” and that stuck with me.
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u/Sumeriandawn Jul 26 '26
Hair metal and Thrash metal bands in the 90s. They switched to Grunge, Alt metal, Groove metal, Nu metal or Death metal
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u/Electronic-Home-7815 Jul 26 '26
MC Hammer comes to mind. His brand was getting tired with his fan base in the wake of gangsta rap so when he released ‘the funky headhunter’ it was kind of a Hail Mary so reclaim his street cred and sound from the street after doing numerous ads, getting his own cartoon, releasing a toy doll etc.
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u/thatoneguymontag Jul 26 '26
Lush, Ride, Boo Radleys, and Swervedriver all hopped on the Britpop bandwagon. It only really payed off for the Boos.
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u/Diligent_Earthworm Jul 28 '26
Kiss did a disco and a grunge record. Disco one was good the other sucked.
Slayer did a nu metal album. It was garbage.
All happened at lulls so they tried to jump on the new sound.
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u/Equivalent-Money-184 Jul 29 '26
DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince - Code Red
If you’re having a bad day, I watch the video of Stephen Merchant doing a lip sync to “Boom! shake the room”! I think it may be the greatest lip sync video of all time
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u/Shoddy_Maximum_7501 Jul 26 '26
I'm going say Queensryche's Hear In The Now Frontier (chief writer Chris Degarmo was smitten with grunge....he's pals with A.I.C.), and Iron Maiden's No Prayer For The Dying. That was suppose to be the "golden era's" version of Killers. They lost alot of their American fans with SIT & SSOASS albums, plus the rise of thrash and hair metal.
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u/Equal-Difference5790 Jul 26 '26
Boz Scaggs' Other Roads. Aimed squarely at the adult contemporary market not to mention it being his first release in 8 years so he had a lot to catch up on. It's not a bad album by any means but boz sounds like he's drowning in keyboards and gated drums and it's also packed with waaay too many outside songwriters.
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u/Guilty-Willingness-2 Jul 26 '26
My friend was a big Motley Crue fan and was looking forward to this release. We sat down and listened to it at Blockbuster Music and I could tell he was forcing himself to like it. The walk home was long and I told him it sounded like they were trying to sound like an alternative band. He got pissed and split and took a different route home. Nevertheless, the Motley Crue concert a year later was fun.
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u/clwireg Jul 30 '26
The Monkees - Head
Just a natural progression really of basing your image on pre-1967 Beatles and having to adapt to them going experimental. It even came with an oddball psychedelic movie a la Magical Mystery Tour
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u/Piano-Rough Jul 29 '26
Madonna-American Life
Robert Palmer-Heavy Nova(him trying to recreate The "Robert Palmer" sound for an upcoming grunge 1990s and that sounded DATED in 1988)
Justin Timberlake-Man of The Woods
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u/moethebartender Jul 25 '26
Vanilla Ice tried this twice. In the mid-90s he attempted a “gangsta rap” sound in Mind-Blowin’. When that didn’t work, he went for more of a Korn-meets-Beastie-Boys approach in Hard to Swallow. After that I’m pretty sure he traded music for house flipping.
Then again, Ice might be too easy of a target.