Watch the Throne

U2 - How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

Adding Tales from Topographic Oceans (which I love) for any prog nerds here. That’s far from the only prog album specifically from 1973 that qualifies (ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery, Jethro Tull’s A Passion Play)

Kiss put out four officially-branded solo albums in 1978 that all shipped Platinum, and their only cultural resonance is when “New York Groove” is played after Mets games.

a staple of used record stores notable for their uncharacteristic good condition compared to other LPs of the era

I was just looking on Discogs to see how cheap a Mint or VG+ copy of any of those you can find, and some label in Russia reissued all four of them as picture discs in 2006. Up there in the Weird Pressings Hall of Fame with the Colorado Rockies version of that last Rolling Stones album.

This is $20 too much

The what version of the last Rolling Stones album? Excuse me?

Oh yeah, they did a really weird cash grab with Major League Baseball where they made 30 different team themed sleeves therollingstonesshop.com/collections/...

A fun indicator of a team's popularity is if its version isn't available anymore (that would be Yankees, White Sox, Tigers, A's, Mariners, Mets, Phillies, Cubs, Cardinals, Pirates, Dodgers) therollingstonesshop.com/collections/...

That song does kick ass

A classic of the genre

I wasn’t expecting you to imply this new Taylor album was going to be good as hell

The White Album.

be here now

Be Here Now by Oasis, though idk if it fully counts because it did well but is now regarded as a cocaine-fueled wreck

That was the one I was going to write in before I settled on Monster

Killers, Day & Age

I initially was pretty meh about Monster due to the hype. Some time later I came to appreciate that it’s a pretty good album on its own.

Tusk

The third Tame Impala record

Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness

yes! basically any double album is too big to fail (yes, including the white album).

First Impressions of Earth

Sweat/Suit

Candy Apple Grey *ducks while pointing out that it has some absolute bangers*

Chinese Democracy

Voodoo Lounge

Bridges To Babylon was even more that. They brought in Babyface and The Dust Brothers to produce lol

Kid A. Also happens to be their best album. But it was a “we’re going to do this and you can’t stop us” kind of deal.

yep, this one - if you're making a Too Big to Fail album, you have an artistic obligation to make it *weird*

(quietly, so quietly, what was that, did i just imagine a sound?): The Blueprint

U2-How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

U2 dominates this genre.

Stone Roses, Second Coming (really leaned into it with that title)

Sure, but without Monster, you don’t get New Adventures in Hi-Fi which was recorded on the Monster tour.

I feel like Tortured Poets Department was already this. Feel like it hit and sank without making much of an impact.

U2, Zooropa Arcade Fire, Reflektor

U2, Pop

Reflektor

You’re not wrong, but I was gonna say Everything Now

Absolutely

But isn't that album's enduring legacy that it was, in fact, a failure?

In Utero

The Wall

okay hold on Monster is a masterpiece, their last one. What are we doing here?

I think it's like Waterworld where commercial expectations are inextricably linked to the conventional wisdom about the work (when they shouldn't be) (Monster is perhaps my favorite R.E.M. album)

and I always liked it but a lot of R.E.M. fans REALLY didn't like it

i think people have come around on considering it great now but at the time i think it was considered a letdown after automatic. and tbh you could find it in every used record store for like a decade after it dropped

Ha yes I've made that same observation MANY a time. That orange cover, filling every bin. It's the most "Used CD Store" album ever unless that's "Pocket Full of Kryptonite." (Which I may or may not have bought used.)

It was an intentional departure from Automatic and Out of Time that the many, many people who came on during those albums were not ready for.

And misread by a LOT of people as a trend-chasing stab at "nineties loud guitar rock," which neglected that they'd ALWAYS been a rock band and that "Monster" sounds NOTHING like any of the canonical "grunge" stuff. Its obvious borrowings are from seventies glam, if anything!

use your illusion I/II

Ok but those had some bangers on them

Chinese Democracy, natch

It doesn't make sense now, but Creed's Weathered definitely fits this.

Oasis "Be Here Now"

Lorde, Solar Power Metallica, St. Anger The Killers, Sam’s Town

The 20/20 Experience Vols 1&2

Oasis - Be Here Now fits this bill to a T.

and yet half the songs from that have been on rollicking Comedy Emmy Award Nominee The Bear

lol

Dan Rather agrees.

I want to use that as a trivia question.

I’m that U2 iPhone one.

I'm not sure if I entirely follow your definition, but Hootie & the Blowfish "Fairweather Johnson" sold over two million copies, and it wasn't because of anything on "Fairweather Johnson".

Also a little more obscure, but Mike Oldfield's follow-up to "Tubular Bells", "Hergest Ridge", "was the UK's number one album in the week ending September 14 1974 and remained so for three weeks", and has sold more than two million copies according to its Wikipedia page.

All of Steely Dan

Gaucho absolutely was that, and somehow ended up being their best record anyway. Fagen’s The Nightfly very quietly became the comeback album.

Please stop making this a post about how you feel about Monster. It's a good album! It is still clearly Too Big To Fail. I sang Strange Currencies for karaoke at my wedding!

Still working on a display piece of a rack of bargain bin Monster CDs, I have 9 and I think I need 3-5 more to really get the point across. I like that album as well but your idea is seared into my brain, we were HS juniors when it came out and were impossibly excited to buy/listen to it!

A bunch of my choices were already taken, so I'll go with Tusk

YES

You know my dad's friend played the synth when they'd do it live

21st Century Breakdown by Green Day

American Idiot

I think 21st Century Breakdown is more appropriate

if we're being fair, nimrod should probably have been Green Day's "let it be"

Does Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water count?

Fun fact, that album still holds the record for fastest selling rock album of all time and probably will forever since no one buys music anymore, so I say it absolutely counts

Wu-Tang Forever

Yep. Though its peaks are some of Wu Tang's highest peaks

Don't get me wrong, I love that record. It's just a bit of a bloated mess at times.

Jawbreaker - Dear You

I'm too young to remember how it was received, but maybe Around the World in a Day?

Absolutely. This might be the winner. Everyone still bought the album, but there was a "what's this hippy shit?" backlash from the crowd that discovered him through Purple Rain.

Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile

is Chinese Democracy in this category I don't even know

a better answer is probably Favourite Worst Nightmare

or Random Access Memories for sure

maybe that's more like duke nukem forever

critical environment super different. It will get universal praise.

A Too Big To Fail album can still do well, critically and financially, but it's still going to bear the marks of it being too big to fail

Metallica - Load

Oasis' Be Here Now

Michael Jackson History

I was gonna say - Basically all his post-Bad albums are like a junkie dead set on recapturing their highest high