Sophomore slump

The tendency for a recording artist’s second album not to live up to the debut happens for a variety of reasons. (Nowadays, it’s more like their debut falls short of their mixtapes.) Some notable ones: The artist had their whole life to make their first album. They have a year to make their second. They haven’t explored or incubated the idea long enough, or done enough preliminary work, to make it strong. They remain committed to promoting the first album and performing it live. They’re not focused on the second album. They must live up to even higher expectations of their work. They want to run away from the possibility of releasing subpar work, and being seen as a one hit wonder. There are solutions, of course. They could revisit their early work for raw material, which they can use in their sophomore work. They could focus on making the second album, and give up money and momentum from their first album. They could let go of expectations and how people think of them, and focus on…