Flop Songs That Derailed Rock Bands' Entire Careers

After years of struggle and toil, success can come in an instant for a rock band — and it can go away just as quickly if those musicians go and release a single so musically terrible, unpopular, or misguided that it flops hard enough to jeopardize the group's very existence. Once-beloved rock bands that charted Top 40 hits with machine-like consistency can all of a sudden become yesterday's news, rejected by the world at large. Why? They broke the cycle of good tunes with some objectively bad music.

Flop songs are commonplace, but we've chosen those that fail to resonate or sell as well as the ones that rocketed a band to fame and fortune. These are the tunes these once-blockbuster bands unleashed that seemed to undo all that came before them, the ones that missed the charts altogether or which were the first domino in the chain on the way to long-lasting obscurity — also the ones we just can't stand to listen to even once. Some bands break up in the wake of their monumental dud, while others struggle to regain the goodwill of their fanbase, and all because they chose to showcase what we just know is a cringe-inducing, off-kilter, or really bad song.

Probably the most radio-friendly pop-rock band on the scene in 1992 and 1993 was the Spin Doctors. The group's album "Pocket Full of Kryptonite" sold 5 million copies on the strength of a slew of popular, playful, and danceable singles, including the Top 20 hits "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" and "Two Princes." The jam band with a predilection for hooks and guitar crunches struck quickly with a follow-up, the 1994 album "Turn It Upside Down."

To build interest in the album, the Spin Doctors released "Cleopatra's Cat" as the initial single. It didn't sound like anything the Spin Doctors had ever previously recorded, nor indeed like anything that anyone had recorded. Challenging and self-conscious, "Cleopatra's Cat" featured lyrics about classical Rome that front man Chris Baron delivered in a vocal jazz, or scatting, style. The rest of the band delivered a free-form mixture of coffeehouse jazz and Beat poetry backing. 

The music video of "Cleopatra's Cat" proved so unpopular that MTV removed it from its playlist less than two days after its premiere, while the song peaked at a lowly No. 84 on the Hot 100. The Spin Doctors tried anew with "You Let Your Heart Go Fast," which adhered to its original style, but the damage was probably already done — it failed to reach the Top 40. Never again did the Spin Doctors appear on the pop chart.

In 1988, the musical comeback story of the year was the Beach Boys. Without a Top 10 hit since 1976, the group went to No. 1 with "Kokomo," a paean to island life from the soundtrack to "Cocktail." The Beach Boys, at that point led by Mike Love, doubled down on the "Kokomo" sound and vibes, churning out music that trafficked in '60s nostalgia but was soaked in '80s synthesizers. The 1989 album "Still Cruisin'" was a middling hit; the 1992 follow-up, "Summer in Paradise," wasn't.

"Summer of Love," the promotional single sounded a lot like a "Kokomo," but with somehow more keyboards and drum machines and tacky lyrics in which old men ogled young women — most of them rapped by Love. The song was rejected before it was even released; the Beach Boys proposed it as a collaboration with Bart Simpson, but "The Simpsons" said no. It missed the pop chart altogether, but the band kept flogging the single for three years, and the music video for "Summer of Love" was used as a segment on a 1995 episode of "Baywatch." "Summer of Love" marks the last time that the Beach Boys recorded and released a single that wasn't a cover.

While "Africa" isn't the rock classic it's been made out to be, Toto still ranked among the biggest bands of the 1980s. Its 1982 album "Toto IV" has sold 4 million copies and spawned the smashes "Africa" and "Rosanna," which went to No. 1 and won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, respectively. As the '80s wore on, the versatile band adapted with the times and continued to land songs in the lower reaches of the Top 40. However, "Pamela" was the last gasp by a band slowly falling apart. 

"Pamela" was conceived in cynicism, seeking specifically to remind audiences of "Rosanna" and to restore the band to prominence. But "Rosanna" had featured the vocals of Bobby Kimball, who had been fired from Toto in 1984. New singer Joseph Williams took the lead on "Pamela," so if Toto sought out casual fans, this song just sounded like another generic keyboard-driven soft-rock ballad, of which the radio was lousy in 1988. "Pamela" made it as high as No. 22 in 1988, the last time Toto would score a Top 40 hit.

In 1995, the crazy real-life story of Duran Duran took an odd turn when the band squandered its early '90s comeback, following up the sophisticated pop smashes "Ordinary World" and "Come Undone" with "White Lines." The band must have noticed that the biggest things in music in 1995 were Britpop and hip-hop, so it did its best to make a Britpop version of an '80s rap classic. However, all the instruments are so overly processed that they sound like synthesizers. They almost drown out singer Simon Le Bon's unnecessary and distorted "dang-a-de-dang" vocal through-line. "White Lines" was the main single taken from the album "Thank You," a collection of shrill and oblivious covers of well-known songs that also saw Duran Duran convert Lou Reed's disorienting "Perfect Day" into soft rock, and Public Enemy's "911 is a Joke" into a blues song.

Critics weren't kind. "An instant camp classic. Just don't try listening to it,"  Select exclaimed of "White Lines." The single bombed in the U.S, missing the Hot 100, and Duran Duran never again experienced stateside superstardom.

Some might think that Everclear is a forgotten '90s band that deserves a comeback, but it might take a lot of effort to crawl out from under the mess of its last major singles. The trio generated some significant rock radio hits in the 1990s, like "Santa Monica," "Father of Mine," and "Everything to Everyone." Then in 2003, it unveiled "Volvo Driving Soccer Mom," a snide and all-encompassing critique of middle-aged American women. At first, Everclear front man Art Alexakis derides the women for being party girls in their youth, and then he teases them for growing up and settling into quiet, upstanding lives in the suburbs.

Perhaps because Everclear insulted factions of its own fanbase, "Volvo Driving Soccer Mom" tanked, despite an expensive promotional blitz from Capitol Records. In 2000, Everclear's "Wonderful" peaked at No. 11, its best showing ever on the Hot 100. Three years later, "Volvo Driving Soccer Mom" couldn't motor onto the chart at all, nor did it spur sales of the album "Slow Motion Daydream," which moved about 10% as many copies as the band's previous release, "Songs from an American Movie."

Shortly thereafter, two-thirds of Everclear — drummer Greg Eklund and bassist Craig Montoya — bolted. Alexakis then left Capitol Records and has since reformed Everclear with hired musicians, but the band never again reached its '90s or 2000s heights.