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Who's the worst "they're back to their roots!" comebacks in music history?

DryvBy

DryvBy

Member
Whenever a new Eminem album comes out, I always hear fans try to claim they're back, meaning they're back to their peak performing albums or original style. Every single time I hear a new Eminem sound, its generic sounding, lifeless and it sounds like an old man trying to stay relevant. Eminem is special because I've heard "this time, he's really back!" a dozen times. And when they're saying this, they're trying to say he's back to Marshal Mathers LP, the good one. The latest Eminem song to do this has the nostalgia factor with the music video to really make you feel like he's back, but the lyrics are garbage.

blink-182 is another one. I heard the One More Time... was back to Enema of the State. This week, I finally listened to it and it's not really any good. It sounds like new era pop punk without most of the comedy, and it sounds cringe coming from these near 50 year olds.

Does anyone have friends or read fans say "X is back!" of a band or singer you liked only to be extremely confused if they've been a marketing plant or they're just stupid? If so, which of them is "back" but not really at all?
 
SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Whenever any band does this, it's kind of this admission that they've run out of things to say or new ideas and they're just accepting their place as a nostalgia act. I can't think of any band that has done it well.

But if you really want to know the one that made me cringe inside out and then back again, there's only one song that comes to mind.



Hrk69 said:
Eminem is the fucking goat.

Easily the best that has ever done it
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It's not even disrespect to Eminem, but it's hard to deny his new thing is going hard for the nostalgia/recapture the past thing, and that's just always corny.
 
Trogdor1123

Trogdor1123

Gold Member
the worst they? I’d say it’s anything with Keith Richard’s but that’s because he just looks worse and worse each time.

The actual worst, and I really hurts me to say, has to be Elvis. He was a god at one point so it was just impossible to get back there and he should have never tried.
 
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B

billthomas696969

Member
Chuck Berry said:
Pearl Jam's newest is a good example of this
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Pearl Jam has been getting the "back to their roots" rub from the press since at least the self-titled album. That was 2006. They're farther away from their first back to their roots than they were from their roots the first time they went back to their roots.
DryvBy said:
Chevelle may be one of the only bands I feel like did a thing and continued it the entire time.
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AC/DC is the classic example of made the same album 18 times and it was always great.
 
Giallo Corsa

Giallo Corsa

Member
- Billy Idol - dude's still alive and kicking but, let's be honest , he's been completely irrelevant since the 80's.

- Iron Maiden - I'll always love the dudes and they're one of the few mega bands left but...each time I listen to a new album I think that they should have hang up their instruments long, long ago, the riffs sound rehashed as do the melodies and Bruce's voice isn't getting any better.

- Pearl Jam - IMO, their last good album was VS, after that...they haven't been able to recapture that magnificent, 90's Grunge "funk" that they had.
Huge generalization but...they look and sound like "dads"

- Most 80's band like White snake, Europe, Def Leppard, Motley crew etc etc, you can't just recapture that 80's magic (nor fame).
 
DryvBy

DryvBy

Member
Trogdor1123 said:
the worst they? I’d say it’s anything with Keith Richard’s but that’s because he just looks worse and worse each time.

The actual worst, and I really hurts me to say, has to be Elvis. He was a god at one point so it was just impossible to get back there and he should have never tried.
Click to expand...
I'm honestly shocked him and Mick Jagger are still alive. They look like 40 years ago, they were almost dead.
 
bender

bender

What time is it?
Giallo Corsa said:
- Pearl Jam - IMO, their last good album was VS, after that...they haven't been able to recapture that magnificent, 90's Grunge "funk" that they had.
Huge generalization but...they look and sound like "dads"
Click to expand...

Yield is probably my favorite Pearl Jam album but I'm not their biggest fan in the first place.
 
Bry0

Bry0

Member
“Korn III Remember who you are”

The name is obnoxiously on the nose, they used Ross Robinson to produce (who produced their first couple albums) and they tried desperately to recapture a lot of the sounds and song writing used in earlier albums.

Oh and it’s awful. Absolutely soulless and forced and awful.
 
SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
DryvBy said:
Chevelle may be one of the only bands I feel like did a thing and continued it the entire time.
Click to expand...
There are plenty of artists who continued to evolve their whole careers without ever becoming nostalgia acts or repeating themselves. Tom Waits, David Bowie, Beck, Prince, Fiona Apple... It's hard obviously and sometimes artists end up trend chasing like Madonna, but there are artists that do.
 
Y

YCoCg

Member
Most recently? Katy Perry right? She wanted to recapture that Teenage Dream style, went back to the old producers and writers, etc, and the few fans hyped it up as a return to her best pop era.

The song was shit and it bombed.
 
March Climber

March Climber

Gold Member
Fart Knight said:
LP fucked us fans so many times.
It was a good album but still didnt have the same sound as HT or Meteora.
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Puscifer said:
I mean was I the crazy one for thinking that Living Things was not the comeback needed after Thousand Suns and Minutes to Midnight?
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Minor hot take: Minutes to Midnight should be considered up there with Meteora and HT. Was it a slightly different sound? Yes. It worked though.

LP fans simply won't put it up there with those two albums.

Edit: Also I agree with OP's take on Eminem. He is a legend, but he is tarnishing his record with subpar follow up 'sequels' to his older classics. I'd argue that he should have tried something new and tried rapping over drill instrumentals instead of completely skipping them. Rap God was him heading in the right direction to make a new album in a modern way, but he didn't do much of anything with it except use that flow a little on Kamikaze and use it on some features on other artist songs.
 
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Puscifer

Puscifer

Member
March Climber said:
Minor hot take: Minutes to Midnight should be considered up there with Meteora and HT. Was it a slightly different sound? Yes. It worked though.

LP fans simply won't put it up there with those two albums.
Click to expand...
I mean I liked them all on some level. The older the more I understand a lot of those "changes" bands make in sound. Plenty of albums I've changed my mind on over the years. Motion City Soundtracks "My Dinosaur Life" went from my most disliked to my favorite!
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
ManaByte said:
Bullshit. They've been great after Lars fucked St. Anger.
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Death Magnetic was also fucked. One of the worst sounding albums i ever heard, which was a shame because it had some good songs in it after a very long time. It was funny because the remixed/remastered DLC version for the Guitar Hero games was the only way to listen to it in proper quality.
 
jufonuk

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Foo fighters kind of went to shit around that sonic highways Album. I felt they got better after it’s a shame about Taylor :(

Prodigy seems to be going strong. Their new album hasn’t come out yet. I’m interest to hear it. Will be the first one without Kieth.

Apart from that I don’t know.
 
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KrakenIPA

KrakenIPA

Member
When it comes to new music from old artists I usually don't get involved with it. I like to wait until the hype dies down to give a song or album a good listen.

I recently revisted Madonna's Ray of Light album, and damn that did not age well.

Believe it or not, one band that has impressed me more than a few times is Smashmouth.
 
Toots

Toots

Gold Member
Trogdor1123 said:
the worst they? I’d say it’s anything with Keith Richard’s but that’s because he just looks worse and worse each time.

The actual worst, and I really hurts me to say, has to be Elvis. He was a god at one point so it was just impossible to get back there and he should have never tried.
Click to expand...
Keith Richards i totally agree, and the shorts you can see on youtube of him backstage playing stuff with zero feeling or timing like the crippled old fart he his are downright pathetic



But you cannot tell me that Fat Elvis sweating like a pig singing unchained melody while having a seizure on the keyboard isn't the greatest thing ever.

 
Sushi_Combo

Sushi_Combo

Member
Giallo Corsa said:
- Billy Idol - dude's still alive and kicking but, let's be honest , he's been completely irrelevant since the 80's.

- Iron Maiden - I'll always love the dudes and they're one of the few mega bands left but...each time I listen to a new album I think that they should have hang up their instruments long, long ago, the riffs sound rehashed as do the melodies and Bruce's voice isn't getting any better.

- Pearl Jam - IMO, their last good album was VS, after that...they haven't been able to recapture that magnificent, 90's Grunge "funk" that they had.
Huge generalization but...they look and sound like "dads"

- Most 80's band like White snake, Europe, Def Leppard, Motley crew etc etc, you can't just recapture that 80's magic (nor fame).
Click to expand...
I really enjoyed Billy's Cyberpunk record :messenger_grinning_sweat: His new material is also not too bad but yeah, very much lost in relevance for a while.
 
StueyDuck

StueyDuck

Member
I would say almost all of them.

The only ones who hang around are the ones who continued to create music.

But every comeback album we've had has at the very best been ok but mostly rubbish
 
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