The Sophomore Slump

Every band goes through this. Okay. Maybe not every band, but most bands.

It's the sophomore slump.

A band will come out with a first album that hits the bell at the top of the charts so hard the bell cracks.

Then, nothing. Their second album isn't worthy of the case it comes in. The album gets tucked away, never to be listened to again, though it does give you the sad bragging rights that, "I have all their albums."

Why is there a sophomore slump?

...because they spent years getting that first album ready. A band works hard, plays the local venues, and slowly move up until they hit the point where people will pay for an album of their music. They've been doing those songs for a while. They know which ones the people like. They've tweaked those songs to make people yell and clap at their gigs.

Then, they go to write the second album, and they do one of two things. They either use the songs they didn't use on the first release, which are usually not as good, or they make all new songs, under pressure in a record deal, and they hurry them out without that kind of intensive customer testing.

Then they bomb out.

What I stumbled across earlier today was that the phenomena of the sophomore slump is a lot like a mid-life crisis.

Not just men go through the mid-life crisis. Women do it too, or there wouldn't be any market for face-lifts outside of Hollywood. These men and women hit a point in their life where they have a great, best-selling, chart-topping life, where they've followed their primary, obtainable, society-approved dreams to fulfillment.

Where to go next? To the secondary dreams. The ones that are just a little more wild, a little more adventurous, and often, a lot more expensive. They go for it. They buy a convertible, etcetera, etcetera.

...and it's not what everyone was used to. It's different. It's good to them, and what they like, but it's not what the public, or the people around them want to see.

It's a mid-life crisis.

It's life's sophomore slump.