20 bands whose second album is the best thing they ever did

They say you have a lifetime to make your first album and six months to make the second. And while that’s true, it doesn’t mean the follow-up to a classic debut has to sit in the shadow of its predecessor.

Many bands haven’t just bettered their debut album at the second time of asking – they’ve delivered a record that stands as their finest work.

Here are 20 bands whose second album is greater than anything else they made.

Rainbow - Rising (1976)

Just nine months after his new band’s debut album, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, the former Deep Purple guitarist delivered a masterpiece with this follow-up. Rainbow’s Rising had a power and grandiose quality perfectly illustrated by its cover art. Blackmore had retained only Ronnie James Dio in a new line-up featuring heavy-hitting drummer Cozy Powell.

On an album loaded with mighty tracks – Tarot Woman, Starstruck, A Light In The Black – the crowning glory was Stargazer. With Dio’s voice flying high over Blackmore’s earth-shaking riff, the sound swelled by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, this was Rainbow’s Kashmir. PE

Alice In Chains - Dirt (1992)

Alice In Chains' debut album, Facelift, helped to catapult a nascent Seattle scene into the mainstream. By 1991, and the releases of Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten and Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger, the whole world had been introduced to this brand new genre – grunge – and it had taken on a life of its own.

But everything was just about to get darker – a whole lot darker – with AIC's sophomore record, Dirt. Heavy, bleak and brutally self-lacerating, Dirt was their epic junkie confessional. Sadly, it would prove all too prophetic for Layne Staley. CR

Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell (1977)

No, it wasn’t Meat Loaf’s first album - that was 1971’s soul-rock curio Stoney And Meatloaf, recorded with fellow Hair cast member Shaun “Stoney” Murphy. And this follow-up isn’t one of the greatest second albums ever, it’s one of the greatest albums full stop.

The combination of whacked-out songwriter Jim Steinman’s horny pocket symphonies and Meat’s leather-lunged operatic howl was unstoppable and untoppable. The hits will continue to resonate for the next thousand years. Your children’s children’s children will know all the words to Paradise By The Dashboard Light and Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad.

A perfect melange of 1950s teenage death ballads, Broadway pomp and head-caving hard rock, Bat was created in a long-gone world where rock’n’roll gods stomped the earth and no one stomped heavier than Meat Loaf. The term ‘classic rock’ was practically invented for this record. KM

Heart - Little Queen (1977)

Heart’s greatest album kicked off with the heaviest song they ever recorded, Barracuda. And the fury in that song spoke volumes about the mood in the band. The success of debut album, Dreamboat Annie, had prompted their former label Mushroom to release an unofficial Heart. Little Queen was their riposte – a record that restored their credibility and then some.

Ann Wilson’s lyrics in Barracuda were a riposte to Mushroom’s sexist marketing of Heart’s debut Dreamboat Annie, and the riff was equally venomous. But the album isn’t all piss and vinegar. Among a handful of gentler songs is Love Alive, a homage to Led Zeppelin. PE

Saxon - Wheels OF Steel

Saxon’s second album is simply one of the greatest heavy metal records of all time. In headbanging anthems such as Motorcycle Man, the hit single 747 (Strangers In The Night) and the gargantuan title track, Wheels Of Steel captured the essence of the band and the spirit of the NWOBHM.

It was also the making of the band. After their self-titled debut had flopped, Wheels Of Steel blasted into the UK Top 5, a victory made all the sweeter by the uncompromising nature of the music. As Byford said: “It’s a really fucking heavy album.” And at the time, it blew the mind of a 16-year-old kid named Lars Ulrich. PE

The Black Crowes - The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion (1992)

The Black Crowes’ debut, Shake Your Money Maker, introduced these swaggering retro-rockers to the world, but this follow-up remains the Robinson brothers’ finest work.

With a brilliant new guitarist, Marc Ford, replacing the errant Jeff Cease, the band were on a roll, cutting the whole album in just eight days. Its heavy, funky, soulful rock‘n’roll – best illustrated by the snaking Remedy and the stoned jam Thorn In My Pride – carried echoes of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Sly & The Family Stone. In essence this album is the Crowes’ Sticky Fingers. PE

Nirvana - Nevermind (1991)

Bleach was a fine enough debut, but hardly one which signalled that the band who made it would go on to become the defining band of their era. But this follow up changed the game entirely – for Nirvana and everyone else.

With Nevermind, Kurt Cobain assembled a remarkable set of songs that appealed to headbangers, punks and pop fans alike. Chief among these is Smells Like Teen Spirit – the song that single-handedly turned grunge from underground movement into cultural phenomenon. But elsewhere on it the hits just keep coming: Come As You Are, Lithium, In Bloom. Truly, there has never been a second album like it. GP

Lou Reed - Transformer (1972)

Lou Reed’s self-titled solo debut included various leftovers from his previous band The Velvet Underground and, most bizarrely, Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman of Yes. Unsurprisingly it sold no better than the Velvets’ albums. His second, released just six months later, made him a superstar.

Produced by David Bowie and his guitarist Mick Rosson, Transformer caught the mood of the glam-rock era with Mick Rock’s cover of an androgynous Reed, and some classic pop songs – notably Satellite Of Love and Perfect Day – that echoed Bowie’s early-70s material. The album even gave Reed a Top 10 hit Walk On The Wild Side, despite blasé references to drugs and oral sex. PE

Foo Fighters - The Colour And The Shape (1997)

In many respects this was the first proper Foo Fighters album, the self-titled ’95 debut having been more of a Dave Grohl solo record.

It’s more disciplined and focused, not to mention demanding; drummer William Goldsmith even quit during the recording, while Grohl went through a divorce. But the pain was worth it. Sounding like it was built with arenas in mind, it ushered in the post-grunge age with their drummer-turned-singer now a fully formed songwriter, and the heavily melodic groove of songs like Everlong and My Hero sat comfortably alongside the furious Monkey Wrench and the brooding Walking After You.

There’s an energy and commitment about this album that came from a band who were all on the same wavelength. CR

Dream Theater - Images And Words

Dream Theater had to overcome a number of hurdles in order to create their second album, and their masterpiece. Recovering from the embarrassing failure of their debut album, When Dream And Day Unite, for the follow-up they brought in new singer James LaBrie and butted heads with their producer, David Prater, who drummer Mike Portnoy later called “one of my least favourite human beings on the planet”.

Despite all that, it’s difficult to fault Images And Words, which did far more than just enable Dream Theater to let in a vital chink of daylight. In fact its start-to-finish excellence served to open up a skylight to the cosmos. DL

Elvis Costello - This Year’s Model (1978)

His second album and first with The Attractions, This Year’s Model is Elvis Costello at his most startling. Understanding by instinct that the door kicked off its hinges by punk would soon be reframed and reinforced – and would thus exclude this peculiar-looking and unsettling artist – here the music makes its point with a precision that is fully forensic.

Airless and watertight, astute and unforgiving (‘You want her broken with her mouth wide open’, he sings on This Year’s Girl) with songs such as Pump It Up, (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea and the National Front-baiting Night Rally, with This Year’s Model Elvis Costello proved that he was anything but a passing fad. IW

Stone Temple Pilots - Purple (1994)

STP’s second album was a defiant middle finger to the critics who had dismissed them as mere Pearl Jam/Alice in Chains copyists. With Purple the Pilots found their own voice, by taking the formula of debut album Core and mixing it with elements of psychedelia, country and blues. They borrowed heavily from the 60s, as did their peers, but managed to put a spin on it that felt uniquely their own.

Released just two months after Kurt Cobain’s death, Purple did little to silence their detractors, but songs such as Meatplow, Vasoline and Interstate Love Song did the talking. The greatest album Scott Weiland has ever been involved in, it should be regarded with the same reverence as Ten, Dirt and Badmotorfinger. RD

Warren Zevon - Warren Zevon (1976)

Warren Zevon’s second album, released seven years after his misfiring debut Watned Dead Or Alive, was the closest the maverick singer-songwriter came to making a stone-cold classic. Roping in a bunch A-list muso buddies (Jackson Browne, Don Henley and Glenn Frey, Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks), he served up one of the great LA records.

His connections with the early-70s Laurel Canyon ‘mellow mafia’ are evident on Hasten Down The Wind and Desperados Under The Eaves, but the outlaw myth-making of Frank And Jesse James and the S&M-themed Poor Poor Pitiful Me had teeth and weren’t afraid to bare them. Best of all is the country ballad Carmelita, one of the finest junkies’ laments ever written. DE

Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral (1994)

The point where Trent Reznor went from snotty electro-punk to industrial metal emperor, one man’s fucked-up mind has never sounded so cool.

Recorded at the house where actress Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson family, The Downward Spiral paints a chilling portrait of societal, moral and personal collapse. Influenced by David Bowie’s Low, and constructed from heavily processed guitar sounds, glacial electronics and distorted samples, its nightmarish atmospherics are enhanced by Reznor’s man-on-the-edge musings on religion, addiction, degradation and despair.

The result is unremittingly bleak, utterly believable and unquestionably Trent Reznor’s finest hour. AC

Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

The previous year’s debut album Jefferson Airplane Takes Off had been a halting start, but once they swapped original singer Signe Toly Anderson for former model Grace Slick everything clicked into gear. Recorded mostly live, Surrealistic Pillow struck a pitch-perfect balance between Slick’s extroversion and Marty Balin’s softer folk offerings, such as How Do You Feel and Comin’ Back To Me.

Every scene needs a song to carry its message to the world. The Airplane’s second album provided two. Somebody To Love and White Rabbit, delivered in Slick’s confident wail, were the twin clarion calls for San Francisco rock. Surrealistic Pillow is one of the West Coast sound’s most durable albums. BDM

Cheap Trick - In Color (1977)

Rakish and determined to find a true path, on their second album Cheap Trick found a formula that was to prove irresistible within a couple of years. While their debut might have been too close to The Beatles, or even the Electric Light Orchestra, with In Color, Cheap Trick were definitely a band standing apart from the sum of those influences.

Tom Werman’s polished production set a tone that allowed the band to compete on an international level. And there are enough strong songs on this album to make it a landmark release. From Southern Girls to Clock Strikes Ten, I Want You To Want Me to Hello There, it’s a record that has got the right chops. MD

Pixies - Doolittle (1988)

Pixies’ 1987 debut album Surfer Rosa was a game-changing alt rock album, but in terms of iconic songwriting, it was bettered by the Boston band’s second album, Doolittle.

Released just 13 months after its predecessor, Doolittle retained Surfer Rosa’s weird edge (immortal opening track Debaser’s line about ‘slicing up eyeballs’ was inspired by filmmaker Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalis surreal 1929 collaboration Un Chien Andalou) but wrapped it up in off-kilter pop melodies. Those melodies weren’t far from the surface in other tracks, too: Monkey Gone To Heaven, No 13 Baby, Gouge Away and the simply sublime Hey. Surfer Rosa will always have its champions, but Doolittle remains Pixies’ crowning glory and one of the most influential albums of the 80s. CR

The Moody Blues - Days Of Future Passed (1967)

Keen to showcase the band’s new ‘Deramic Sound’ technique, Decca encouraged the Moody Blues to go big on their second album. The group duly obliged, ditching the R&B of their 1965 debut The Magnificent Moodies for a cohesive, day-in-the-life song suite that fused rock with orchestral elements, largely via the wonder of keyboard player Mike Pinder’s latest toy: the Mellotron.

The London Symphony Orchestra was a fictitious guise for a bunch of trusted session players brought in by arranger Peter Knight, and the music reached a symphonic pinnacle during new boy Justin Hayward’s outstanding Nights In White Satin. A masterful work that helped lay the foundations of prog rock. RH

Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream (1991)

Smashing Pumpkins were in a mess when it came to recording their second album. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlain was addicted to heroin, bassist D’Arcy Wretzky and guitarist James Iha had broken up, and Corgan, who was in the grip of a dark, depressive episode, was tasked with delivering an album that would nudge them into the commercial realm of Nirvana’s Nevermind.

After writing Today, Corgan eventually tapped in to a rich seam of creativity. His pursuit of perfection came at a personal cost – he overdubbed most of his bandmates’ parts – and later revealed that his work ethic ruined relationships and his mental health. That said, Siamese Dream is a perfect album. ND

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks (1968)

Rock’s grouchiest man launched his post-Them career with 1967’s Blowin’ Your Mind!. Despite featuring the joyous Brown Eyed Girl, Morrison himself wrote it off as it off as a contractual mistake. But there was no error when it came to this follow-up.

Amid the wilting flower children and dead-eyed rock’n’rollers of 1968, Astral Weeks stood apart. Van was a natural-born malcontent with a voice like ripping velvet, and his second solo album bridged earthly beauty and spiritual transcendence. “If I ventured in the slipstreams, between the viaducts of your dream,” he sang on the opening title track of his second album, an East Side mystic embarking on a journey that passed through innumerable musical dimensions: rock, jazz, R&B, blues, folk and other less tangible forms.

At heart, cornerstone tracks Cypress Avenue and Madame George were a road-map to Morrison’s childhood. But really, Astral Weeks contained entire universes in its soul. DE