After a group/artist has a great debut album, it's most likely that that artist will have a not nearly as great Sophomore Album. Hence the term Sophomore jinx.

But occasionally artist follow up a great sophomore album with an even greater sophomore album.

In fact, there even seems to be a specific pattern for artist/groups that fit this mold. Specifically, their first album is a Genre album (That is, the album fits very easily into a very popular genre at the time) but their follow-up album sounds very very different, not a genre album (or is genre-expanding) and shows you skills/talents you didn't even know that artist had.

I may be getting too specific when we should maybe just be talking about artist who had a very good debut and a great sophomore album but I think a bunch of artist fit the specific pattern I described. Artist like:

Outkast
D'Angelo
Prince (cheating by starting with his self-titled wider released album)
Common (cheating by considering his first album good)


I also maybe unnecessarily limiting the convo because some artist fit the pattern I described above over a course of albums and not necessarily in their debut and sophomore. Artist like:

Marvn Gaye
Beatles
Beach Boys

Anyway, Let's discuss this evolution of artist. Anyone else you can think of fits this pattern?




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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"