Obi-Wanma

Yes, actually. Celebrity Skin was their most commercially successful album, but Billy Corgan wrote a lot of that album.

mcnabb

Glenn Frey and Don Henley had so many hits the 80's.

Frey had 'You Belong to the City,'and 'The Heat is On, and 'True Love' just to name a few.

Henley had much more then just 'Boys of Summer.'
-Dirty Laundry
-Down at the Sunset Grille
-All she wants to do is dance
-The End of the Innocence
-Last Worthless Evening
-The Heart of the Matter

The Questyen

Not really sure why you guys are holding it against her for having help writing an album when 90% of the musicians out there do the same thing. Other then just because you hate Courtney Love.

Cusm

My issue with Live Through This, is that she took the credit (beside giving her guitarist credit) when it's pretty obvious who wrote it.

JeffTheAlpaca

I disagree I think Ozzy Osbourne as a solo act was more interesting and exciting than his time with Sabbath though I like both.

Dave Gaham from Depeche Mode.

He is not terrible and I assume he has had some success since he put out maybe 2 albums and another two with Soulsavers but I prefer his work with Depeche Mode.

Barth

Agreed. I would say Blizzard, Diary, and Tears are all great. Even Ultimate Sin and No Rest for the Wicked had its moments.

The Infidel

Prince. Talentless fucker should have never left Grand Central.

Paff

Hey, on sort of the same topic, what are some of the more useless solo acts? As in, there's really no difference between the solo act and the band they broke off from. I was thinking of this when I heard a Mike Ness song, which doesn't sound any different than a typical Social Distortion song. Same with Tom Petty vs Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Many of Petty's biggest songs ("Free Fallin'", "Runnin' Down a Dream") were actually solo projects. But if you go to a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert, you're gonna be pissed if you don't hear those songs.

Adam Ant is another one, although that actually makes a little more sense, as the Ants were changed out several times. It was always just Adam Ant and Marco Pirroni anyway.

rw2516

There are artists with a signature sound that seems to dominate anything they are involved with.
David Coverdale. Seems to me Whitesnake albums are just Coverdale albums.
Paul Rodgers. Everything he does has his signature sound. Free, Bad Company, Firm, The Law, solo. Like different bands he front are just different back up bands. Even the Queen album he did sounds like a Paul Rodgers solo album with Queen as backup.

mndtrp

There's a difference between what Steven Wilson is doing now as opposed to what he was doing with Porcupine Tree, but I can see the same albums coming out of his former group before going solo.

Defiant1

To use the two best known examples in modern music, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake, it's all about control, ego, and money. They don't have to give verses to the other members, don't have to split the $$$, and they get to have all the glory. This would particularly apply to Timberlake, who was part of a manufactured boy band with a particularly stifling and limiting contract. At least Beyonce was under her dad's control during the Destiny's Child days, so that would have been easier. But even she eventually dumped him and now it's all her.

B5Erik

Are you kidding?

Dickinson's Accident of Birth and Chemical Wedding albums are generally considered to be outstanding.

And Halford's Resurrection and it's follow up were both very good.

Rex Fenestrarum

Natalie Merchant. Whether you liked 10,000 Maniacs or not, the band was tight, and most of their albums were very well-produced. And Merchant was a big part of that: on a good day, her lyrics were damn near like poetry. But once she got too big for her britches, Merchant left and released album after album of mopey songs about wars and motherhood. And the Maniacs could never find a singer or songwriter as good as Merchant. It's kind of fitting that after Merchant left, 10KM's only notable hit was a cover of a Roxy Music song.

Hiro11

I'm not sure I agree. The Smith's debut is a classic, as is The Queen is Dead. However, both Meat is Murder and Strangeways, Here We Come are spotty. The Smiths did produce lots of great non-album singles which have been collected many, many times in various forms.

You could argue that Morrissey had a similar hit/miss ratio. I'd say Viva Hate and Your Arsenal are as good as the best Smiths albums. I'd say Vauxhall and I is very, very close in quality. Morrissey's early singles as collected in Bona Drag are absolutely excellent and rank with something like Hatful of Hallow from the Smiths. There are many great later singles as well. The rest is spotty, just like The Smiths.

My non-obvious nomination is for James Mercer. I figured he'd be a slam dunk as a solo act. I like some of the stuff he's done after he dismissed the original lineup of The Shins, but it's nowhere near the quality of their first three albums. Broken Bells sounded like a great idea but really wasn't. Port of Morrow is a Shins album in name only and is very overproduced. Even someone as dominant in a band as Mercer was in The Shins might need the band structure to rein in bad impulses.

TheDude

I was a big fan of Led Zeppelin back in the '80's (after discovering the band late), but I never liked any of Robert Plant's solo work; he had a lot of radio hits in the late '80's & '90's, but I always felt these songs paled in comparison to Led Zep's work...

Josh-da-man

Plant's "Now and Zen" album was pretty good; probably the best post-Zeppelin album of anyone in that band. But I do agree that most of Plant's (and Page's) output after 1980 is really meh.

cdollaz

I like the first 3 Plant albums, especially Shaken N Stirred. Those after that have been uneven.

hdnmickey

Personally I've loved Plant's solo stuff and would have never included him in this thread. Page is a better fit, but his stuff was all over the map given who he worked with. And Jones just didn't put out much. But that Them Crooked Vultures album was solid.

majorjoe23

Billy Corrigan after Smashing Pumpkins, including any time he's used that name after 1998 or so.