Suggestaholic!

I just finished reading an excellent autobiography by Dean Wareham, ex-leader of Galaxie 500 and Luna.  The book is almost as good as the one written by Mark Everett of the Eels.  Almost, but not quite.

In any case, Wareham mentions something near the end I’d like to explore a little deeper.  Here’s what he wrote:

We made an album called The Days of Our Nights.  Our fifth studio album, it is possibly the worst of the seven that Luna made.  If you study rock-and-roll bands, I think that the fifth album generally tends to suck.  Maybe they all hate one another by this point.  Maybe they need new ideas.  Maybe they’re trying new ideas.  Whatever the reason, the fifth album is difficult.

Is that true?  I’d never considered such a thing.  Pretty interesting.

So, without cheating and putting advance thought into it, I’m going to just pull a few legendary bands out of my crapshaft, and test the theory.  Want to play along?

Wareham goes on to say the Beatles are an exception.  In fact, he claims, they sucked until their fifth album.  So, I’ll leave them out of our little experiment…

Let’s get started, shall we?

The Clash, Combat Rock Definitely not my favorite, but not as bad as their previous album, Sandinista! Does it suck?  No, it does not.  But it’s teetering.

REM, Document A great album.  Their next two were kinda weak, but this is about fifth albums, isn’t it?

The Replacements, Pleased to Meet Me Ha!  One of the best albums ever released, on Earth anyway.  My favorite record by one of my favorite bands.

Van Halen, Diver Down Half the songs are covers, and the whole thing clocks in at just 30 minutes.  Certainly not their finest (half) hour, but still a lot of fun.  I’d have a hard time using the word “sucks.”

The Police, Synchronicity Their final release, I don’t think the Police had any bad albums.  And this one is pretty darn solid.

Led Zeppelin, Houses of the Holy This is the album I reach for, on the rare occasion I’m craving some Zeppelin.  So, I guess that makes it my favorite, huh?

I know this isn’t much of a sample size.  But we can continue our important study in the comments, if you’d like.  Test your favorite band against Dean Wareham’s “Fifth Albums Suck” theory.

And to be fair, he starts the paragraph by saying sucks, and ends it with the more nuanced difficult.  And if you look at my list of bands above, most were indeed in the middle of some sort of upheaval at the time their fifth albums were released.

The Clash and Police broke up immediately afterward, the Replacements had just fired their iconic lead guitarist, REM was about to leave their longtime label, and that Van Halen album displays evidence of creative arrest.

So, maybe Wareham is on to something, after all?  What do you think?  Tell us about it in the comments.

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