Never as good the second time: artists whose first album impressed you but...

[Trollheart]

I don't mean their debut, I mean the first album you heard from them. Don't know if anyone else experiences(ed) this, but I've come across artists who, on first listen, have really impressed me, but then, on getting the rest of their albums, it was totally meh. Whether this means I heard their best first and it was all downhill from there, or that they really only made one good album, or whether it's just me trying to make the other albums live up to that first impression, I don't know, but it's happened.

Lana Lane:- loved Lady Macbeth and got all her other albums. None have so far been a patch on that one, in fact I haven't even felt like listening to any of the others all the way through, but I regularly listen to Lady Macbeth.

Gary Hughes: I love Gary with the band Ten (what? Who? Shut up) and absolutely adored his first solo album - well, the first I heard - The Once and Future King. Now admittedly it was a bit of a rock opera, bringing in big names from the worlds of prog rock and AOR, but his other efforts have been, to be fair, pitiful.

Shadow Gallery: Went wild over Tyranny/Room V (they're a sort of suite that runs through two albums) and while I wouldn't say the rest of their discography was garbage, none really lived up to those two.

Axxis: Got into them through Paradise in Flames, but again, though I've liked some of their other stuff, none of their albums other than that have really spoken to me.

Any of you had this experience? And if not, then

[Lisnaholic]

The album/artist that fits your description for me is Paul Young's debut album, No Parlez.

His voice, the backing singers, the production (I suppose) made for a really exciting album. It was unlike any other music I was listening to at the time, and at over 1 hour long, a weaker track or two was excusable to me.

What a disappointment his next album, The Secret of Association was. It was like the producers got together and said, "Let's swamp all the things that made No Parlez special with the kind of dreary accompaniment that everyone's been doing for years, so that this next album just sounds like the usual pop/soul dross". Well, mission accomplished, guys ! (afaik, the same applies to the rest of his albums too)

On this track, as elsewhere on No Parlez, back-up singers, The Fabulous Wealthy Tarts, are within an inch of upstaging the lead vocal guy:- 

[Psy-Fi]

'Machine Head' was the first album I heard by Deep Purple back in the 70's and it blew me away. Shortly afterwards, I started checking into their other albums and even though they have a lot of other songs that I like on those other albums, none of their other albums have ever really impressed me from start to finish like that one.