{"id":59023,"date":"2026-02-27T11:49:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T11:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/27\/15-80s-albums-that-stopped-rocks-biggest-stars-in-their-tracks-2\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T11:49:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T11:49:28","slug":"15-80s-albums-that-stopped-rocks-biggest-stars-in-their-tracks-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/27\/15-80s-albums-that-stopped-rocks-biggest-stars-in-their-tracks-2\/","title":{"rendered":"15 &#8217;80s Albums That Stopped Rock&#8217;s Biggest Stars in Their Tracks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The &#8217;80s proved to be a tricky decade for rock stars who rose to fame in the &#8217;60s or &#8217;70s.<\/p>\n<p>From drum machines and synthesizers to the rise of music television, their whole world pretty much flipped on its head overnight, and even massive superstars such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/tags\/rolling-stones\/\">Rolling Stones<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/tags\/paul-mccartney\/\">Paul McCartney<\/a> found themselves lost at least once during the decade.<\/p>\n<div class=\"in-article-oop-container\">\n<div class=\"tsm-ad tsm-ad-oop\" aria-label=\"advertisement\"\/>\n<div class=\"tsm-ad tsm-ad-1x1 tsm-ad-oop\" aria-label=\"advertisement\"\/><\/div>\n<p><strong>Read More: <a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/album-flops\/\">Ten of Rock&#8217;s Most Famous Album Flops <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In many cases, you can even pinpoint the exact album where everything went wrong and the band hit a dead end, from <a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/tags\/kiss\/\">Kiss<\/a>&#8216; horribly misguided 1981 concept album <em>Music From &#8216;The Elder&#8217;<\/em> to the album\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/tags\/david-bowie\/\">David Bowie<\/a> considered his personal nadir, one that caused him to abandon his solo career for several years.<\/p>\n<p>Happily in most cases, after making some kind of major change, almost all of these artists were able to rebound and continue pursuing long and successful careers. Here are 15 &#8217;80s albums that stopped rock&#8217;s biggest stars in their tracks:<\/p>\n<div class=\"photogallery-wrapper blog-photogallery \">\n<h2 class=\"photogallery-title\">Dead Ends: 15 &#8217;80s Albums That Stopped Rock&#8217;s Biggest Stars in Their Tracks<\/h2>\n<div class=\"photogallery-description\">\n<p>In many cases, the artists were forced to make major changes to get their careers back on track.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Read More About These &#8216;Dead End&#8217; Albums:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/ace-frehley-second-sighting\/\">Revisiting the Debacle of Ace Frehley&#8217;s &#8216;Second Sighting&#8217;<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/paul-mccartney-give-my-regards-to-broad-street-doomed-to-fail\/\">Why Paul McCartney&#8217;s &#8216;Give My Regards&#8230;&#8217; Was Doomed to Fail<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/aerosmith-rock-in-a-hard-place-turns-30\/\">When Aerosmith Tried to Carry On With &#8216;Rock in a Hard Place&#8217;<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/the-clash-cut-the-crap\/\">When the Clash Regrouped for the Career-Closing &#8216;Cut the Crap&#8217;<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/cheap-trick-survived-the-80s\/\">How Cheap Trick Survived the &#8217;80s<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/david-bowie-never-let-me-down-album\/\">Is &#8216;Never Let Me Down&#8217; Really David Bowie&#8217;s Worst Album?<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/elton-john-leather-jackets\/\">When Elton John Bottomed Out on &#8216;Leather Jackets&#8217;<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/kiss-music-from-the-elder-mistakes\/\">10 Things That Went Wrong With Kiss&#8217; &#8216;Music From &#8216;The Elder&#8221;<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/rolling-stones-dirty-work-album\/\">Why the Rolling Stones Struggled So Mightily Through &#8216;Dirty Work&#8217;<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/bob-dylan-down-in-the-groove\/\">How Bob Dylan Sank to New Depths on &#8216;Down in the Groove&#8217;<\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/black-sabbath-born-again\/\">When Black Sabbath Released Their Only Album With Ian Gillan<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/the-cars-door-to-door-album\/\">Why the Cars Ran Off the Road with &#8216;Door to Door&#8217;<br \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/neil-young-landing-on-water\/\">Neil Young Plugs in the Synths for &#8216;Landing on Water&#8217;<\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/meat-loaf-dead-ringer\/\">When Meat Loaf Finally Released a Follow-Up to &#8216;Bat Out of Hell&#8217;<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/rest\/carbon\/api\/scripts.js?mver=162&#038;gver=9&#038;bid=295&#038;urls[]=https%3A%2F%2Fbtloader.com%2Ftag%3Fo%3D5642230212591616%26upapi%3Dtrue&#038;urls[]=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.p-n.io%2Fpushly-sdk.min.js%3Fdomain_key%3DmxuuNIMSzp6MHphJEoAGlLFQ3qmwQguzkGZl&#038;urls[]=https%3A%2F%2Ftownsquare.media%2Fpublic%2Fresources%2Fjs%2Fpubcid.min.js&#038;urls[]=https%3A%2F%2Fplatform.twitter.com%2Fwidgets.js&#038;urls[]=https%3A%2F%2Fapis.google.com%2Fjs%2Fplatform.js&#038;urls[]=https%3A%2F%2Fconnect.facebook.net%2Fen_US%2Fsdk.js&#038;urls[]=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.pinterest.com%2Fjs%2Fpinit.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\" async defer data-osano=\"ESSENTIAL\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/ultimateclassicrock.com\/80s-rock-albums-that-were-dead-ends\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8217;80s proved to be a tricky decade for rock stars who rose to fame in the &#8217;60s or &#8217;70s. From drum machines and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rock","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}