BOSTON AND THE PROTOTYPICAL CASE OF THE SOPHOMORE JINX

“You’ve got your whole life to write your first album, but only a few months to write your second.” No band proves this oft-uttered truism more than Boston. After penning a record where every single song was a contender for a hit — 1975’s chart-topping self-titled debut — Tom Scholz fell pray to the dreaded but sadly predictable sophomore jinx.

Since fixing my record player a few months back I’ve been diving headfirst into records I haven’t listened to in years like Boston’s second record Don’t Look Back, which served as the soundtrack for my Sunday morning Omelet-making project (onions, mushrooms and gruyere, if you’re wondering. with fresh homemade hash browns!). There’s no two ways about it; Don’t Look Back fucking sucks. There’s not a single song on the record that approaches even the weakest moments of the self-titled; the only one that even comes close is “Feelin’ Satisfied,” posted below, the Side B opener whose feel-good major key riffery and clap-along post-chorus evoke memories of the prior album’s “Peace of Mind.”

A band retrospective on AllMusic.com posits that Scholz, ever the perfectionist, felt rushed by his record label to deliver a second album even after 3 whole years had passed since the first. But the fact of the matter is that these songs just suck and no amount of fine-tuning was going to make them match or eclipse the magic of Boston. It’s hard to write a record when you’ve been touring and promoting the last one non-stop since its release; simply saying “It’s go time” just doesn’t get the creative juices flowing for some musicians.

It’s an understandable pickle in which many musicians find themselves. What are some notable metal bands that you all listen to whose second albums fell way short of the glory of their first?

-VN