“You lie in your bedroom dreaming of rock and roll stardom, of audiences screaming out your name, groupies lined up backstage and exotic drugs”

Today I’m thinking about The Sophomore Slump – in other words, why do so many second albums suck? I’ve decided it’s a combination of the three T’s which I will reveal in this article. Too many singers and bands release great first singles and albums but completely fall apart after that. Sometimes they recover and come back with great third, fourth and fifth albums but a large percentage just slowly fade away, finding themselves lumped into the category of the One Hit Wonder.

The first ‘T’ is Time. Someone once said that you take 20 years to write your first album and six months to write the second. You lie in your bedroom dreaming of rock and roll stardom, of audiences screaming out your name, groupies lined up backstage and exotic drugs from the Amazonian jungle while soaking up your influences and writing and rewriting that one great track that’s sure to get you noticed.

But the time element is also reflected in the economics of today’s music business, which focuses on creating instant hits and rarely seems interested in development of artists over the long term. It didn’t used to be so – one famous example is Bruce Springsteen, whose first two albums were released and promptly ignored by an indifferent world, but his record company stood by him and his third album positively killed. One could also cite the Beatles here – one reason they seemed to burst on the world so fully formed was because they’d spent years grinding out hours of music per night in sweaty holes in Liverpool and Hamburg, so that when their break finally came, they were already one of the best live bands around.

And when massive worldwide success appeared at the Beatles’ door holding flowers and a box of chocolates, it scared the crap out of them. After a few short years, they stopped doing concerts and became a studio band.

That leads to my second ‘T’: Terror. The notion of terror as a factor in rock and roll was first introduced by Greil Marcus in his seminal book Mystery Train. Marcus discusses the career arc of The Band, of how they laboured on the road in obscurity for close to a decade before recording two of the best albums of all time: Music from Big Pink and the even better The Band. Only after those two albums did they go on tour without the comfort of Ronnie Hawkins or Bob Dylan standing in front of them.

“Until they stepped onto a stage there was no way they could have understood how fierce and intense the expectations of their audience would be.” They were so nervous that Robbie Robertson brought a hypnotist on stage with him and so bad that Marcus writes their “first concert ended with an outpouring of anger and rage unlike anything I have ever seen at a rock ’n’ roll show”.

Marcus goes on to theorize that the impact of this anger stayed with them for the rest of their careers with the result that they never approached the same artistic heights again. I think Pearl Jam’s career might be seen in similar terms. Following the massive success of their debut album, it almost seemed as if they purposely walked away from the limelight, content to exist in a tinier corner of the universe.

The third ‘T’ is, of course, Talent and, let’s face it, most people just don’t have it. Few and far between are the Miles Davises or Bob Dylans – people truly gifted who can continually reinvent themselves and create worthwhile music over a span of decades. Most ‘artistes’ simply get lucky and catch a single addictive hook or a beat that catches the zeitgeist of the moment. Some can mould that into a small succession of minor follow-up hits, slowly fading into the fringes of pop ephemera while others burn out or implode almost immediately.

Other factors are involved as well. (But even with the help of a thesaurus, I couldn’t come up with those that start with the letter T, except if I wanted to be extremely creative with my spelling or phrasing.) These would include musicians with massive egos who have a hit and then choose to believe their own hype, as well as those who simply cannot handle all the excesses available to them after their first brush with success.

All of the above came to me when listening to the first batch of new releases this year, as well as a few hold-overs from the end of 2006. Many were second albums from groups that had made a significant impact with their first release, and most proved to be huge disappointments for me.

There’s The Killers, whose debut album Hot Fuss had lots of bright, catchy tunes. One of the bands at Insomnia covers their Mr. Brightside and it seems like the entire audience sings along. The huge success of their album went to their heads and for their second album band leader Brandon Flowers decided he wanted to be Bruce Springsteen: Sam’s Town sinks beneath the weight of its own self-importance.

And what to make of The Kaiser Chiefs? Their first album, Employment, had four hit singles and was filled with great Britpop songs that have found their way onto half a dozen of my iPod’s playlists. Their second album, Yours Truly, Angry Mob has given them their first No 1 single in the UK (Ruby), but for me the excitement has gone. I don’t hear anything new here, any sign that they’ve moved forward in the two years between albums.

One group that triumphs over the sophomore slump is Arcade Fire. I admired Funeral, their first album; I think I love their second, Neon Bible. From the David-Byrne-Sings-Velvet-Underground moody vibe of the opening track, Black Mirror, to the rockabilly-ish Antichrist Television Blues and the slow building anthemic Windowsill, the album is more straight forward, more musically direct and supportive of the kind of lyrics that actually reward a close listen. I think Win Butler is in it for the long haul. They’re supposed to be a powerhouse live, too, but what are the chances that we’ll ever see them in Hong Kong? Slim or none?