15
Smashing Pumpkins Go Electronic

When Smashing Pumpkins released
Adore, Billy Corgan was so wrapped up in his vision of himself as an invincible genius that he believed he could successfully steer the band's sound away from the guitar rock that made them great and toward an electronic sound driven by drum machines and synthesizers. Corgan wanted this album to have a larger, more universal appeal, and to possibly reach out to the--at the time--untapped robot demographic.
While we won't know how the robots feel about the Pumpkins' work until long after Billy Corgan is dead, just about every human can agree it was awful. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlain was absent on this album, and the remaining members changed to a more gothic look, which presumably was meant to convey that the band was dead and needed to be put in the ground before it began to stink up the room.
14
KISS Make a Concept Album

Aiming to recover from a string of failures, KISS decided to release a concept album. Rather than follow the path of successful concept albums by writing about clearly drawn characters that specific journeys, they instead went the Styx route and made a murky, ambiguous and ultimately unnecessary concept album.
Music From "The Elder" was intended to be the soundtrack to a movie never released, and instead became an album never purchased.
Music From "The Elder", was so bad that the band didn't even go on tour to promote it. Let's take a second and consider that the boys who weren't above painting up their faces to look like stars and cats and wrote songs almost exclusively about partying, didn't want to go on tour with this album because it would have been too embarrassing.
13
Garth Brooks is Chris Gaines

Speaking of soundtracks for movies that were never made, in 1999, harmless pop-country singer Garth Brooks decided to branch out musically and mentally. He became Chris Gaines, his darker, rock-singing alter ego and released an album of Gaines' songs that were supposed to function as a "pre-soundtrack" to precede
The Lamb, the fictional Chris Gaines biopic Brooks was creating/starring in.
Sales of the album were much lower than anticipated, and because the project was equal parts of Brooks out of his league and just being totally stupid, the film was canceled and Chris Gaines politely faded away. This appeased those diehard Brooks fans who were worried if they supported the Gaines album, they would lose the doofy singer-songwriter they'd all come to love, for some reason.
Take note, country-haters: If you buy Chris Gaines' album, Garth Brooks will disappear. Just as a warning though: If you buy Chris Gaines' album, you will own a Chris Gaines album.
12
David Bowie Goes Industrial

Normally a master of innovation and reinvention, Bowie went to the well one too many times in 1995 when he decided to be exactly like Trent Reznor, who was finally enjoying mainstream success with Nine Inch Nails'
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