Fanon Discontinuity / Music

Sometimes, it's easy to ignore music from the favourite artist of a fandom that they perceive end up sucking. If this happens to an entire genre of music, it becomes a Dead Horse Genre.

Note: Do not post examples of personal discontinuity. Examples should only be of groups of fandoms.

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• Hank Williams Jr.: Once Williams began his southern rock-infused brand of country in the late 1970s, starting (most notably) with "Family Tradition," it soon became as though his earlier catalog of hits – conventional honky tonk and countrypolitan, and traditional country-styled covers of his father's songs – never existed. Bocephus' earlier career (which lasted right up until his mountain-climbing accident that nearly killed him) included two No. 1 hits, "All For the Love of Sunshine" and "Eleven Roses," both ballads and far different than his later material.
  • One of his older songs ("Hamburger Steaks, Holiday Inns") was performed by him and Kid Rock on their CMT Crossroads special. Possibly to let people know that he does, in fact, have music much older than "Family Tradition".
• Rick Springfield: During the early- to mid-1970s, Springfield had a semi-successful career as a teen idol and folk-styled artist, even scoring a top 15 pop hit called "Speak to the Sky." Once he began his acting career on General Hospital and completely overhauled his musical style to new wave and power pop – seen most notably on his 1981 hit "Jessie's Girl" and 1982's "Don't Talk to Strangers" – fans soon completely disregarded his earlier material.
• To Boston fans, Third Stage was their final studio album.
• The Bee Gees: The Gibb brothers' "First" LP was actually their fourth - they released two prior albums as a local Australian act, "The Bee Gees Sing and Play 14 Barry Gibb Songs" and "Spicks & Specks." (They also recorded a wealth of material for a third LP, of which an acetate was pressed, but the disc was never released - at least, until all but two of its tracks appeared on an unauthorized German compilation, Inception/Nostalgia.)
  • Likewise, the group universally ignores their 1981 album Living Eyes. Due to legal issues surrounding the band at the time, as well as the huge backlash brought on by the end of disco, the album slipped quietly in and out of the marketplace without any attention whatsoever. Ironically, it was the first rock album to appear on CD - but its initial pressing would be its only CD edition.
  • And then for other fans, it is only their popularity peak – those songs released from 1975 to 1979, and included on their album Greatest, which helped define the disco era – that matters. Their ballad/close harmony sounds of the late 1960s-early 1970s, their slump during most of the 1980s and their 1990s return to conventional pop is completely disregarded as those fans think first of songs like "You Should Be Dancin'," "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever."
• Most people stop Pearl Jam's Vitalogy after "Immortality," ignoring "Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me".
• A number of KISS fans prefer to pretend there was never a time when the band performed without the makeup. Another group would like to throw the disco album in there as well.
  • This is ironic, because two of their most popular songs ("Lick it Up" and "I Was Made for Lovin' You") respectively come off of said sans-makeup album (Lick it Up) and said disco album (Dynasty).
  • Many fans would like to forget that the Concept Album Music from "The Elder" was ever made. So would the group.
• Aphex Twin, considered one of the greatest Electronica musicians alongside Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Autechre, Leftfield and Brian Eno, is a particularly complex case. There are those who consider his first two ambient albums to be his greatest, whilst others only consider the first one any good; some detest the manic drill n bass/drum n bass noise of ...I Care Because You Do, Girl/Boy EP and the Richard D. James Album. The Analord series, consisting of Acid Techno tracks done completely on analogue equipment without computers has an avid fanbase and yet many detractors, some calling it a masterpiece whilst others saying that his experimentation drukQs is better. All the while the other side says drukQs is a bunch of Richard's B sides thrown together as a double album. Funnily enough, his most commercial releases, "Come To Daddy" and "Windowlicker" have everyone agreeing that they're great.
  • Except Richard D. James himself, he's expressed his contempt for "Come To Daddy", referring to it as a 'death metal jingle'.
• Autechre seems to have forgotten that its first release was a generic old school hardcore single from 1991, Cavity Job, and not its first foray into IDM, "The Egg" (released on the seminal 1992 Warp compilation Artificial Intelligence).
  • Similarly many fans of Warp Records would rather forget that it ever released straightforward techno in its earliest years rather than IDM, or that it now focuses on more commercially-accessible indie rock.
• Whenever a Progressive Rock group releases an album that is more "commercial" and less "progressive," there are always legions of progressive rock fans to deny its existence. Examples include ELP's Love Beach, anything by Genesis after Peter Gabriel left, Yes's entire Trevor Rabin era, and any Gentle Giant studio album released after Interview.
  • Some Genesis fans are a little more generous and include A Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering, the first two post-Gabriel releases, in the list of accepted albums. The band still had Steve Hackett for those two, and the music, stylistically, wasn't too different from their previous albums. In contrast, many fans and even the band themselves refuse to acknowledge ...Calling All Stations..., the one album released after Phil Collins left the band, though some are starting to warm up to it.
    • It's easy for fans to disregard Genesis' first two albums and say that Collins was their only drummer.^note The band actually went through three drummers before hiring him: Chris Stewart (who performed on the early demos and the first two singles), John Silver (who performed on From Genesis to Revelation), and the late John Mayhew (who performed on Trespass). If drummers before Collins are acknowledged, it's only on Trespass. It's widely agreed that there is no such thing as From Genesis to Revelation. Again, this extends to the band themselves.
    • Other fans will disregard everything the band did that doesn't qualify as "prog", with the possible exception of an occasional pop song. This doesn't mean that everything they recorded after Duke doesn't exist. It means that the group's début, From Genesis to Revelations, does not exist, and that after Duke the group sporadically released a series of EPs ranging in length from around fifteen to around thirty minutes, until their last EP in 1991, which consisted of "Dreaming While You Sleep", "Driving the Last Spike", "Fading Lights", and (maybe) "Living Forever" and/or "No Son of Mine".
  • The members of ELP even admitted that they recorded Love Beach only because they owed their record label another album.
• Many fans of The Clash would prefer to believe that the band ended after 1982's Combat Rock album. The band's next three troubled years, which included a drastic reshuffle of personnel and the widely-panned 1985 Cut the Crap album (most fans pretend "This is England" was a stand-alone song) were all just a bad dream.
  • Word of God is on those fans' side...sort of. Joe Strummer disowned the album, calling the lineup that recorded it "The Clash Mark II" (Mick Jones and Topper Headon had been fired prior to its recording). He was, however, just one God (albeit an important one), and the album does exist and says "The Clash" on the cover. But that's what denial is for.
    • It does help that the album recorded was far from what was to have been, with their manager adding a majority of overdubs, drum machine and synthesizers without Strummer's acknowledgement (Paul Simonon was featured on just one track too).
• Aretha Franklin, the queen of soul, recorded a disco album in 1979, entitled La Diva. She was trying to win back the mainstream success she lost in the early 70s. It was a critical and commerical flop and many of her fans refuse to acknowledge its existence. It's so hated that it still hasn't been released on CD in the US.
• Bad Religion fans (and the band itself) tend to ignore Into the Unknown, which was a prog rock album from an '80s punk band, and their last two albums on Atlantic Records, No Substance and New America. They cite the latter two as an example of what can happen when your main songwriting partner quits the band, your band is stuck in major label politics, your wife divorces you, you record the album with one of your favorite artists from back in the day and find out he's a douche...
• Most Iron Maiden fans prefer to develop selective amnesia during the eight-year period between Fear of the Dark and Brave New World. Two albums were (not) released during this time. Interestingly, the band themselves do not acknowledge this, instead occasionally integrating some of the more well-received songs from the Blaze albums into their latter-day setlists.
  • Some Iron Maiden fans tend to consider anything produced by the band without Bruce Dickinson fronting the band to be sub-par, although most do recognize Paul Di'Anno's work on the first two albums. A few extend to "without Bruce and Adrian Smith", so they can ignore the two albums done after the guitarist left.
  • Another part of the fandom just pretend that everything after Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son just never existed.
• Similarly, many fans of Judas Priest pretend the band did not exist in the time between Rob Halford leaving the band and their reunion with him. The band was on hiatus for about half of this time. It helps that the band is also steadfastly ignoring everything they released during that time.
  • Some also like to forget that Rocka Rolla exists, firstly due to its poor production, especially as the band didn't have full control over the track selection. However, the Executive Meddling was good in hindsight because it meant that Sad Wings Of Destiny, containing some songs written after the first album, is flawless.
    • Since it deprived the world of hearing what Judas Priest intended to be their Epic Rocking masterpiece at the time, "Caviar and Meths," what happened to the album is still a crime.
• Many fans of Metallica insist that they released nothing after that bus crash. Others say that their recording career ended immediately before the Black Album, or immediately after it. The tiny fraction of fans left insist that they went on to make five more albums after this, but when faced with a copy of St. Anger (or, God forbid, Lulu), go into violent conniptions.
  • And another small group of Metallica fans pretends that there was an eleven-year period where they didn't record any new studio albums: specifically, the eleven years between ReLoad and Death Magnetic. All they did during that time was get a new bassist and put out a live CD and a Cover Album. Do not tell them otherwise.
    • It's actually faster to note the number of albums that AREN'T considered Fanon Discontinuity by any number of fans, right down to the people who thought Ride the Lightning of all albums was selling out because of "Fade to Black".
• Though to a lesser degree, a very few Less Than Jake fans like to pretend their last album was Borders & Boundaries. Other like to pretend that their whole discography exists, except for the non-existent album In With the Out Crowd.
• Many prefer to believe that Abbey Road was the last album that The Beatles put out, rather than Let It Be. It helps that Abbey Road was the last album they recorded (Let It Be was recorded earlier, but its release was delayed until after Abbey Road) and is widely considered almost perfect, with several tracks clearly laid down by a band knowing they were at the end of the road and determined to go out on a high. Let It Be is widely disliked — several fine tracks aside (this is still The Beatles we're talking about — even their more polarizing albums have great songs like "Across the Universe") — for being a slapdash effort created when tensions between the band members had all but reached the breaking point, sabotaged (depending on your viewpoint, certainly if you're Paul McCartney) by a combination of over-production and spite, and released to get it out of the way and to have an album to go with the Let It Be film.
  • The existence of "new" Beatles albums after Let It Be (and the legal break-up) is even less certain. The Red Album, the Blue Album, Past Masters, The Beatles Anthology and 1 exist, but most other compilations are not consistently acknowledged. Most experienced Beatles fans do think that the 1999 Yellow Submarine Songtrack album exists, but it forced the original 1968 Yellow Submarine soundtrack album out of existence (and out of print) in the process (at least before the '68 album was re-released with the remasters... a few years before the Songtrack followed suit).
    • Like Let It Be, the Yellow Submarine issue is helped by the fact that the original was not considered one of the band's better efforts to begin with and the reworking removes some of the cruft and filler (mainly the George Martin soundtrack instrumentals which, while not bad themselves, aren't of a great deal of interest to most Beatles fans), and in a similar fashion to the US Magical Mystery Tour example, replaces them with better-regarded songs which also appear on the soundtrack (such as "Eleanor Rigby," "Nowhere Man" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds").
  • Almost all modern Beatles fans believe that the original Capitol LPs don't exist because, if they do exist, then Capitol remixed the songs, adding echo and fake stereo, and messed so much with running order that, between 1963 and 1966, there would be more Capitol LPs than original EMI LPs if they existed. This includes fans who have never known the albums even when Canon Discontinuity isn't figured in. There are definitely sleeves to Yesterday... and Today floating around, some with the Butcher Cover, but Yesterday... and Today as an LP is generally denied the dignity of existing because even the band hated the idea of it. The album of Magical Mystery Tour exists because it is better to accept the Capitol LP version than the British EP — but then, it's not normally treated as a Capitol Beatles album.
  • Speaking of Let It Be, the existence (or not) of the digitally remastered re-release Let It Be... Naked can provoke fist-fights under the right circumstances. For its detractors, it's not the original album and never will be, and it butchers the original songs for the sake of Paul McCartney's ego. (McCartney was the driving force behind the re-release; he never liked the original, especially not the way his songs were produced on it.) For its supporters, it removes the inconsequential fluff, spiteful sabotaging, and syrupy over-producing, and it restores the songs to the way they should have been, making the entire album a stronger and superior work in the process.
  • It's not just The Beatles as a group, either; the solo members get this as well:
    • There are a good many fans of John Lennon's solo career who disregard the existence of his musical collaboration projects with Yoko Ono. Their first three joint albums, Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, Unfinished Music No. 2: Life with the Lions and Wedding Album are experimental Avant-Garde Music, Noise Rock and Leave the Camera Running recordings that are downright unlistenable more than once for the most part. The only one of their joint projects that is usually acknowledged is Double Fantasy, only because it is the most "normal" sounding of the albums, and was also the last album Lennon recorded before his death. It could probably go without saying that almost everyone has tried to repress the memory of a certain woman standing next to him, shrieking.
    • There is some uncertainty about how many albums Paul McCartney has recorded since 1976. There are many people who don't think he recorded anything between Tug Of War and Flaming Pie. Some seem to think his recording career ended when Wings did, or didn't exist between then and his latest album. (Interestingly, people taking that position often keep it even when the "latest album" changes.)
    • Some people don't count George Harrison's Brainwashed as part of his canon mainly because it was released posthumously through the efforts of his son, Dhani.
    • Ringo Starr released two albums in 1970, Sentimental Journey and Beaucoups of Blues, but since they didn't do well on either side of the Atlantic, many people ignored them in favor of considering Ringo his true debut as a solo artist. This has lessened in later years as Beaucoups of Blues has been reassessed as a forgotten...well, not masterpiece, but a decent album at least. One of the people who discounted those albums was Ringo himself, who named his 6th album Ringo The 4th. Ironically, that album itself is highly contested by fans for its baffling disco focus which was widely seen as trend chasing. Fans consider it the end of Ringo's relevance as a solo artist, if they even acknowledge it at all.
    • Speaking of Ringo, once he took over, Pete Best was never heard of again.
• Despite Ed Roland's I Am the Band status, most Collective Soul fans aren't too interested in anything recorded after Blender, and most don't even like that one due to how little it sounds like anything the band did before. For some reason, without Ross Childress, it just wasn't the same. While there are some who defend Youth, all but the most devoted fans will prefer to say the band broke up after Dosage. If they even acknowledge that one.
• Less dedicated fans of Queen pretend Hot Space doesn't exist, and that "Under Pressure," one of the band's biggest hits and a track from that album, was just a stand-alone single.
  • It's worth mentioning that David Bowie was meant to guest star on all the songs, not just that one, but he, well, hated them. And this was right before his Canon Discontinuity.
  • Queen themselves ignored the other songs on Hot Space. In their last two major tours with Freddie Mercury, only "Under Pressure" was performed live.
  • Also, Queen and Paul Rodgers never met.
  • Adam Lambert never met with the band.
• Fans of Pink Floyd have also invoked this:
  • Depending on the fan they didn't produce anything after:
    • Syd Barrett left (whether or not A Saucerful of Secrets counts or not varies)
    • Before and/or after either The Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall (arguably their most famous works; a few only consider the four albums of that period)
    • After Roger Waters left.
  • Some of the remaining fans (which to be fair are more than you'd expect with the sort of discontinuity the band gets) have gotten confused by the hate, as Floyd tried to turn the clock back to their most productive (and popular) period (Meddle to Wish You Were Here (1975)). On the other hand they'd also be the first to admit that the lyrics had taken a bit of a knock since then.
  • The band members themselves are making a conscious effort to erase Atom Heart Mother from their memories (at most, David Gilmour still plays "Fat Old Sun" on occasion), and they've also admitted they didn't really know what they were doing during Ummagumma (though they do acknowledge the live disk actually turned out pretty well).
• Some members of the Hardcore Punk scene insist that The Misfits do not exist without Glenn Danzig, while others are actually pleased that he's off doing his own thing (usually making a fool of himself and screaming at Hugh Jackman) these days while Jerry actually turned the band into a success.
• Many Levellers fans think they released nothing after the "One Way Of Life" compilation until either Green Blade Rising, Letters From The Underground or ever, depending on who you talk to.
• Many hardcore fans do embrace it as a great exploratory departure album, and the band is quite fond of it, but to the casual fanbase and general listening public, Def Leppard never released an album called Slang. (On the tour to promote the album, the band even found themselves dropping the new songs from the set list and digging back into the 80s library to replace them, thanks to audience rejection of "the new Def Leppard.") The next studio album, Euphoria, saw a return to the slickly produced arena rock sound that made them so big in the first place.
  • And if it's not Slang that they shelved, it's Adrenalize. Most people in general have a hard time believing the band continued making music after Hysteria. The rest consider it to be a Sell-Out, and that the band ended with the loss of Rick Allen's left arm.
• More than a few fans of The Corrs dismiss everything post-Talk On Corners — which means starting without the virtual remix album, Talk On Corners: Special Edition.
• Daft Punk have released from one to five albums depending on who you talk to. To elaborate: their first album was the French house-style Homework. Their second album, however, was the electropop Discovery, which caused some of their house fans to disown them but is now considered a career landmark. The pro forma third album, Human After All, is the one most often discarded for sounding rushed, repetitive and incomplete. Whether or not the live album Alive 2007 counts depends on how you view the first three (though review website Pitchfork admitted that Alive 2007 did help to validate the existence of Human After All). The fifth, Random Access Memories, is disowned by the house fans who find it a Discovery 2 and hardcore fans unhappy to see the band finally hit the mainstream, because otherwise it's a very beloved album.
  • This does not count the first live album, Alive 1997, which consists of songs from Homework. Or the TRON: Legacy soundtrack.
• Some say there are no Aerosmith albums after 1977, some extend that to 1979 to include Night in the Ruts, which still did okay in the charts and is still in the same vein as their earlier albums.
  • According to others, they went back into business due to Run–D.M.C.'s involvement. But most certainly the band never participated in the soundtrack for Armageddon (1998)...
  • Many fans also like to believe that Aerosmith took a five year break from 1979-1984 and certainly didn't break up and make crappy albums. Also, considering modern evidence (Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, anyone?), the band probably agrees.
    • Not "Probably." Drummer Joey Kramer said about Rock in a Hard Place "the record doesn't suck. There's some real good stuff on it. But it's not a real Aerosmith record because it's just me, Steven, and Tom - with a fill-in guitar player." That's right, it's not even an Aerosmith album anymore.
• There's some argument about when Barenaked Ladies broke up. Some say it was after Stunt, some say after Maroon, but almost nobody believes they stayed together after Everything To Everyone — the release of multiple albums after that notwithstanding.
• For most of her Latin American fans, ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones? was Shakira's last work.
  • Even some of her English-speaking fans prefer to think of her solely as an incredible Colombian artist, denying the existence of Laundry Service (citing the narmy lyrics resulting from bizarre forced-rhyme), and question the peroxide job in her foray into the English language market.
• Some dedicated fans say Nightwish dropped off the face of the earth when Tarja Turunen was kicked out. Even more people deny she released a solo album. Even more deny she covered Alice Cooper's "Poison".
  • Others still insist Nightwish began when Anette Olzon started singing with them.
    • Most of the old fanbase is jumping with joy now that Anette left and Floor Jansen, ex After Forever, has been officially introduced as her permanent replacement.
• Some believe there are no Nine Inch Nails albums after the live CD And All That Could Have Been.
  • Other NIN fans prefer to think they released between one and four albums (and maybe a DVD) in the last three years, depending on whom you ask. There never was a video for "Deep," though.
  • An alternate theory is that after "Closer" took off, Trent went into seclusion and was never heard from again.
• Although it was acclaimed critically and has been embraced by a few fans, country singer-songwriter Alan Jackson's 2006 album Like Red On A Rose, an exploratory easy-listening album that consists almost entirely of slow, bluesy love songs (as well as the only album in his catalog not produced by Keith Stegall), might as well not exist to many fans. Usually the only song that's given a pass is "A Woman's Love", if only because it's a rerecording of an older song of his.
• Fatboy Slim may have released one, two, three or four albums, depending on whom you ask.
• According to many Oasis fans, they only recorded two albums, "Don't Go Away" was a stand-alone single, and they were on a reunion tour at the time they broke up in 2009. This is especially in regards to Be Here Now (even if certain reviewers consider that, beyond the overblown production, there are standout tracks, such as the aforementioned "Don't Go Away," the one song on the album that was universally praised by critics). An example of this was when a survey was done asking 100 fans which twenty songs should appear on the "best of" compilation album, there were no songs (even obvious choices) that featured on everyone's list. No songs from Be Here Now appeared on Stop the Clocks (the aforementioned "best of" collection) anyway, not even "Don't Go Away".
• "The End Is the Beginning Is the End" is the end for a lot of The Smashing Pumpkins fans. And, really, the band itself.
  • At the height of the band's popularity this was true. Now of days, most fans either disown anything after 2000, just Zeitgeist, or after Jimmy left the band. A lot of the fans are actually liking the new material from Oceania, so who knows.
  • Since the band was started by the collaboration of Billy Corgan and James Iha, it's reasonable to consider a "Smashing Pumpkins" without the latter an In Name Only side project, much like Zwan. Although whether the band once Iha (and Jimmy Chamberlain again) rejoined counts...
• Ask any blues fan, and they'll swear up and down that Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters never bothered to stoop so low as to record psychedelic rock albums during the late '60s.
• Depending on who you ask, Rush disbanded no later than Signals, and have been on a reunion tour since 2002.
  • Some Rush fans are actually looking forward to these rumoured albums Vapor Trails and Snakes & Arrows. The demos sound promising, but they REALLY need to be mixed better before being released to the public..
  • Many Rush fans don't much care for their debut, save for "Working Man". Even those who do deny it as a Rush album since Neil Peart wasn't present on it.
  • Many more pretend that their synthesizer era (arguably Signals through Hold Your Fire) didn't exist. Of course, when a band has eighteen studio albums and a nineteenth on the way, you have to expect some won't be remembered as well as others.
    • Their third album, Caress of Steel, was a pretty substantial failure when it was released, but most fans seem to like it these days.
  • A common consensus is that Power Windows was the final Rush album, and that everything afterwards was a former Rush cover band performing under the name.
• Fans of Mumford & Sons insist that the band never went electric on their third album which does not exist. Some will also claim they never experimented with gospel music on a second similarly non-existent album.
• Several classical music fans insist that only the part of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Requiem" written by the composer himself before he Died During Production exists, and that it was never finished by his pupil. There are even musicologists that went as far as to attempt to finish the work themselves, according to The Other Wiki.
• Depending on which of most old AFI fans you are asking, they never released anything after their first three major albums, they disbanded right before joining any major label, or simply haven't released anything ever since Sing the Sorrow but may be working on something right now.
  • Also, some may remind you that Davey and Jade never considered using synthesizers in their songs, let alone make a side-project containing almost no guitar track.
• To the Chinese Cultural Department, Guns N' Roses never released Chinese Democracy.
  • Many fans not situated in China would like to take a similar stance, holding that nothing was released following the Use Your Illusion albums. (And nothing was released after 1994 until 2008, except for the one-off song "Oh My God," yet another unpopular song.)
  • Basically when Slash left the group, the band ceased to be. Only to revive when he and Duff returned! (ironically, with a few Chinese Democracy songs on the setlist)
• As far as many Gary Numan fans are concerned, he released nothing between Telekon and Sacrifice. It helps that Numan himself isn't so fond of that period.
• Radiohead's first album Pablo Honey is ignored not only by most fans, but also by the band. It's been aeons since the last time they played a song from it.
  • And the one song ("Creep") they used to play all the time dropped off the setlist for about five years because fans used to come for the song and then leave. Apparently, they've softened up and play it once every couple dozen gigs now.
  • Some fans also like to forget the existence of The King of Limbs, seeing A Moon Shaped Pool as the true successor to In Rainbows.
• Another disowned debut: The Prodigy's Experience. Since their second album came out and Oldskool Rave went out of fashion, Prodigy fans would deny there was ever a time when Howlett's music was bright, humorous and cartoony.
  • Similarly some fans would rather forget about their 2004 album Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned; and The Prodigy themselves have disowned the 2002 non-album single "Baby's Got a Temper".
• Gogol Bordello seem to have disowned their first two albums, Voi-La Intruder and Multi Kontra Culti Vs. Irony because they hadn't really "found their sound" until the third, Gypsy Punks. Which is too bad, 'cause those first two albums are still pretty good.
• In the late '90s, Garth Brooks recorded a CD in the role of Chris Gaines, the central character of his planned movie, The Lamb. Sales of In the Life of Chris Gaines were disappointing (by Brooks' standards; it still went double platinum), the reception was lukewarm, the movie was eventually canceled, and the whole Gaines project forgotten by just about everybody. Never mind that it produced his only top 40 pop hit.
  • Garth's sales were starting to decline as early as 1995, with the generally panned Fresh Horses which failed to produce a hit on the magnitude of "The Dance" or "Friends in Low Places". Sevens was also lukewarm, but at least had a huge hit in "Two Piña Coladas".
• Metal enthusiasts prefer to think that 1992's Countdown to Extinction was the last album recorded by Megadeth. Speed Metal enthusiasts try to ignore everything after 1990's Rust in Peace. Come 2004's The System has Failed, they didn't know what to think. (It was a return to form, and United Abominations and Endgame are in the same position.)
  • A significant portion of the Megadeth fandom that otherwise enjoy everything else tend to claim that Risk doesn't exist. However, considering the story behind that album...
  • There are some who believe that Cryptic Writings was the last 'classic' Megadeth album, ignore Risk, and claim that everything afterward is a comeback album.
    • Or that both Cryptic Writings and Risk were commercial disasters and that everything afterwards was generic, by-the-numbers Fanservice with no soul. Basically, they broke up after Youthanasia.
• Most fans of The Cars disown the New Cars period with Todd Rundgren singing. Especially after the original lineup, minus late bassist and lead singer Ben Orr, reunited, toured and recorded the reunion album Move Like This.
• Linkin Park fans have this in spades. There is a small group of early fans who thought Meteora wasn't heavy enough. Even more fans felt Minutes to Midnight was a sell out. A Thousand Suns'' broke the base even more, as the band remained softer but went in the opposite direction.
  • Most fans agree that ''One More Light'' was never released, due to the album being practically straight Pop.
• Little is as entertaining as listening to two Faith No More fans argue about whether the band's first two albums, recorded with singer Chuck Mosley, should count.
  • The band themselves discount We Care a Lot and consider Introduce Yourself to be their debut. This parallels the most common consensus among fans, who consider We Care a Lot to be a more heavily-circulated demo, rather than a studio album proper.
  • There are other fans who argue that the final two albums without Jim Martin don't count. Mike Patton is also not very happy with Album of the Year, and cites that it was the point when "We started to make bad music."
• Some fans of death metal band Cryptopsy do this with any album recorded without vocalist Lord Worm. Depending on the fan, they might even ignore Once Was Not, the one album recorded when Lord Worm reunited with the band, thus limiting the band's discography to the debut album (Blasphemy Made Flesh) and its follow up (None So Vile).
  • Most fans do acknowledge Once Was Not and the work done with Mike DiSalvo on vocals. But ask them who Matt McGachy is or whether The Unspoken King was any good, you'll just get confused stares. Or punched in the face.
  • Alternatively, they did not release anything between 2005's Once Was Not and 2012's Self-Titled Album.
• According to a lot of My Chemical Romance fans, there is no such thing as Danger Days.
  • According to a lot of other My Chemical Romance fans, their only two albums are Three Cheers and The Black Parade. That other one doesn't exist.
  • According to a lot of fans, The Black Parade was the band's first album.
• Many fans of the band Cannibal Corpse will vehemently deny that George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher ever existed, much less replaced former vocalist Chris Barnes.
• Every fan of The Tea Party will tell you that their final album, Seven Circles, doesn't exist. The average fan will say that everything after Triptych is a myth, and a slightly smaller sect will tell you that everything after Transmission doesn't exist. Then, you've got the small group who refuses to believe that Transmission ever existed, solely on the basis of its industrial influences, and that The Tea Party only put out two blues rock albums, and called it quits. Strangely, very few fans thinks any of their albums are bad, as a matter of fact, most will tell you that "they're still better than 99% of everything else" up to, and including, the much hated Seven Circles.
• Van Halen only had two frontmen, David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar. Some fans deny the existence of the latter, but no one (including the band, as shown in their compilation albums) wants to admit there was a third singer, let alone that they recorded an album with him. In turn, there are Gary Cherone fans who will concur and will tell you he never joined Van Halen.
• U2's fandom is divided on which albums not to acknowledge. All after The Joshua Tree, all after Achtung Baby, and (most common) the two between AB and All That You Can't Leave Behind.
• Most Pantera fans refuse to acknowledge that the band originally began as a hair metal group. This is a sentiment with the band itself; all members of the band discount all albums released prior to Cowboys From Hell. They did license a pre-Cowboys track for Donnie Darko, but apparently under the condition that it didn't have the Pantera name attached to it - it's listed in the credits as being performed by the (non-existent) band Dead Green Mummies.
  • On the other hand, there is a much smaller segment of fans who enjoy some or all of those early albums (particularly Power Metal, which they will almost universally cite as the band's true peak) and loathe the groove metal the band eventually became known for. These fans will maintain that either I am the Night or Power Metal was the band's debut (occasionally they'll include Projects in the Jungle, but good luck finding anyone who acknowledges Metal Magic) and insist that the band broke up after either Power Metal or Cowboys From Hell. They'll also get quite upset if you refer to their preferred canon as "hair" or "glam," which, being fair, became less and less accurate with each successive album.
• Yes fans tend to disagree over which albums did or didn't happen. It doesn't help that the band suffers a Broken Base, with "Troopers" preferring their earlier works and "Generators" preferring their later works, but even they have internal conflicts; for example, Troopers will debate Tales from Topographic Oceans. About the only thing both sides will agree on is that Union did not happen.
  • Although the majority of fans (and Rick Wakeman) agree there has been only one lead singer and his name is Jon Anderson, Trevor Horn never made any albums, and the current touring line up is just a tribute band.
  • While most fans agree about the existence of the Yes-in-all-but-name splinter group Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, whether or not they actually recorded an album before merging back with Yes is debatable. And the 8-man lineup that resulted from the merger never produced any new music at all. The only thing that happened before Yes reformed for Keys to Ascension was a neat little Trevor Rabin solo project called Talk, which was sometimes labelled incorrectly as a Yes album.
  • Some fans who like Drama but still consider Jon Anderson the band's only vocalist have regarded it as a Buggles album that featured some members of Yes.
  • Depending up who you ask, there is no Yes without Steve Howe, no Yes without Trevor Rabin, no Yes without Jon Anderson, no Yes without Chris Squire (even though Squire explicitly said he wanted the band to go on past his death), and the list goes on. Getting fans to agree on which albums don't exist is difficult; however, the most frequently contested are the above-mentioned Union, plus Tormato, Big Generator, Open Your Eyes, and Heaven and Earth.
• A substantial number of Christian Death fans consider the band to have ended when Rozz Williams left; and that nothing since Valor Kand took over actually existed. (Although they do retain a bit of shadenfreude over the incident where he was pepper-sprayed on stage.)
• A small subset of The Sisters of Mercy fans treat everything Andrew Eldritch did after Wayne Hussey left to form Mission UK this way. Others consider that period to be their best, or at least most accessible, work.
  • A significant number of people believe The Sisters of Mercy broke up after Vision Thing. Not in a "We're going to ignore them," way, but genuinely believe the group broke up. Nope. They continued on past Vision Thing (1990) until 1993 when they went on hiatus for 3 years. By 1996, however, they were back together and they've never broken up since.
• Fans of the post-hardcore band Chiodos are convinced that the band will never be as successful without lead singer Craig Owens.
  • A decent part of their fan base has taken this even further and agrees that Chiodos have actually broken up, rather than parted ways with Owens.
  • Some of us found Owens voice obnoxious but respected the musicianship of the rest of the band and are actually excited.
  • This is known as the Chiodos principal. While its agreed This is better than This, It still pales in comparison to This
• Subverted with Tori Amos' fanbase. Instead of refusing to acknowledge the albums that they hate, Toriphiles will bash them. (With the possible exception of Y Kant Tori Read, given that it's pretty much Canon Discontinuity.) Although it seems to be played straight with Strange Little Girls, her covers album, even with Tori herself. On her 2009 tour, she only performed material from this album twice.
  • On her very brief 2010 tour, one SLG song made the setlists twice. With only about a dozen shows and 11 albums, many b-sides, side projects, and other material to choose from, it's not that bad a representation. SLG songs were very plentiful in 2007, even songs that had not been done in years. 2003 and 2005 tours were not completely bereft of SLG songs either.
• Ask a Bon Jovi fan about Alec John Such. See if they know.
• Following the release of Spiritual Machines in 2001, Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace went into a coma and the rest of the band refused to go on without him. Since then, some other band calling itself OLP released a couple of albums, but fans of Clumsy and Happiness Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch are still waiting for Raine to wake up.
  • Slight correction: Guitarist Mike "emtee" Turner left and producer Arnold Lanni got fired (keyboardist Jamie Edwards also left, but he was always in the background). While the latter two could arguably be forgotten, fans are waiting for emtee to come back from producing and reform the band. This OLP thing is Raine Maida's solo project.
• Albums by Devo have had lukewarm-to-cold critical response following the release of their first album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!! (Rolling Stone, for example was fairly ambivalent about them at the time; even their own label, Warner (Bros.) Records, reportedly did not "understand" Devo). Fan response to their later albums has varied somewhat, though it's become more rare these days to find "real" fans who like anything less than their first five albums, and even the other three albums have warmed up to some (Devo fans are usually too rational-minded to "bash" any given album). However, depending on who you talk to, you may find those who claim one of the following:
  • Q & A was their only noteworthy album.
  • Q & A and Duty Now For The Future represent "real" Devo while the later, poppier synth albums do not.
    • A subset of this faction would also include their early, lo-fi demos as part of the essential Devo experience.
  • Q & A, Duty Now, and Freedom of Choice (which gave us "Whip It") were great; it all went "downhill" beginning with New Traditionalists.
  • New Traditionalists and Oh, No! It's Devo were pretty good as far as synthpop goes; Shout (and the subsequent departure of Alan Myers as drummer) was their decline.
  • Total Devo was a "post-disco" abomination and Smooth Noodle Maps was only slightly better (or sometimes the other way around); the rest was alright.
  • Then there are those who accept their entire output for what it is (often with the exception of some of their film-related material and a few songs off their later albums). You'll even find a few who hold Total Devo or Smooth Noodle Maps among their favorites. Further differing opinions are held on Mark Mothersbaugh's soundtrack work, side-projects such as The Wipeouters, Jihad Jerry, and Dev 2.0, and any live albums they have released (not to mention demos and other bootleg sources).
  • Or there are even some who like everything up to and including Dr. Detroit, hate Shout, ignore Total Devo, and only like "Post-Post Modern Man" from Smooth Noodle Maps. The new album Something For Everybody has seemingly made most people happy again.
  • Or some like everything up to Dr. Detroit, pretend that the title track from Shout, the "Are You Experienced?" cover and "Here to Go" were stand-alone singles, consider Total Devo So Okay, It's Average, and pretend Smooth Noodle Maps consisted of "Post-Post Modern Man" and nothing else. Again, Something For Everybody makes them happy.
• Simple Minds: It is pretty accurate to say that most fans ignore the band's two Cover Albums "Neon Lights" and "Searching For The Lost Boys". Other albums - particularly those from 1991's Real Life through to 2005's Black And White 050505 - can be divisive. Many were annoyed about Searching For The Lost Boys (which was a bonus disc to Graffiti Soul), because the band had previously said they had enough original music for a double album. As for Neon Lights, it is seen as representing the band's nadir as an unsuccessful attempt at combining their 70s influences with modern dance influences, sounding nothing at all like what Simple Minds were known for.
• Coldplay's shift to arena rock and sonic landscapes created a clear drift. For fans of their more alt-rock area, they never released anything after A Rush of Blood to the Head, at most extending it to X&Y. Others hate their earlier work and claim their first album was Viva la Vida.
• Captain Beefheart's two mid-70s albums Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans & Moonbeams feature the Avant-Garde Music singer attempting syrupy love songs and standard blues-rock songs. Whilst they aren't really that bad, many fans completely omit them from the canon because they were so atypical of his usual style, as well as the fact that the first of the two albums caused the breakup of the 'classic' lineup of the band, and the second was recorded with session musicians. Beefheart disowned the albums later on, even saying people should take them back to the store and get their money refunded. Despite this, the albums were remastered a few years ago.
  • Beefheart later relented over just one track on Bluejeans & Moonbeams, saying that at least "Observatory Crest" was honest and roughly what he was trying to aim for on the album.
• Frank Zappa fans all have a few albums in Zappa's enormous catalogue that they just won't admit exist. It all starts around the time Joe's Garage was released. Some see this album as his last great work, after which his next albums in the 1980s all started to suffer under less colorful and experimental musical arrangements, too much Bawdy Song sang in an annoying voice and political songs that are mostly dated nowadays, because they directly reference Ronald Reagan and the televangelist scandals around Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Others claim that even "Joe's Garage" was too much Album Filler, with "Watermelon In Easter Hay" as the standalone piece. The most despised album in Zappa's entire catalogue is Thing-Fish, a double album Rock Opera with a far fetched plotline that is both musically uninteresting as well as painfully unfunny. To make matters worse several tracks are basically the instrumental tracks from older Zappa records, while Ike Willis sings over them in an imitation of the character Kingfish from the sitcom Amos N Andy. Zappa's classical albums from this time period get more recognition for their merits, but still get less attention than his 1960s and 1970s output. From his 1960s output some fans refuse to admit the CD version of Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, because Zappa remastered the album in the 1980s by adding a new drum track, completely destroyed the original Doo-wop sound that made the record so great in the first place. For years this was the only available version on CD of this record! Only in 2012 the original unaltered album became available on CD again, but strange enough under another title: Greasy Love Songs.
  • Zappa once recorded the debut album An Evening With Wild Man Fischer by street lunatic Wild Man Fischer. After Fischer threw a bottle at Zappa's infant daughter and started to badmouth Zappa in the press for the low sales of the album their collaboration soured. Zappa never re-released the album, not on LP or CD, refused to ever talk about Fischer again and it's nowadays the most rare album in his back catalogue. Bootlegs and black market sales still go for high prices, as this is literally a case of Keep Circulating the Tapes.
• Many Rainbow fans mourn the day that Ronnie James Dio left the band, because they disbanded after that.
• Many Marilyn Manson fans refuse to acknowledge the group got back together, and happily ignore any albums released after their 2003-2006 hiatus. Other Manson fans, for that matter, refuse to acknowledge any album after Mechanical Animals.
  • A commonly held belief is that the band never made any music without Trent Reznor at the production helm.
• Weezer's first two albums, Weezer (The Blue Album) and Pinkerton, are for the most part revered as classics. To quote one Pitchfork reviewer, these two albums are "75 minutes of near-perfect power-pop." Quite a few people would like to forget that their next six albums exist.
  • Although many just pick a few singles from those albums, and forget that they were from albums.
  • A subset of Weezer fans have no problem whatsoever with Weezer (the green one) and Maladroit, despite both being extremely short and not as good as the first two records. The four albums after that though...
• A minority of Starflyer 59 fans insist that the 2004 album I am the Portuguese Blues isn't a proper Starflyer album, for a few reasons: it's not up to the same standards as most Sf 59 releases, it was a jarring departure from Sf 59's sound at the time, and eight of the ten tracks were originally written for a side project that never saw the light of day.
• Depending on one's musical tastes, either Smash Mouth's first album, Fush Yu Mang, consists of "Walkin' On The Sun" and nothing else, or else their two follow-up albums, Astro Lounge and Smash Mouth, don't exist^note in the latter case, they respectively consist of "All Star" or "I'm a Believer" and nothing else. Their fourth album is pretty much disowned by everyone.
• About the only two Dream Theater albums that all fans agree exist are Images and Words and Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory. Images and Words is considered their defining album and Scenes From a Memory is considered their masterpiece, but their other albums all draw large numbers of people trying to ignore them. Train of Thought, Octavarium, and Systematic Chaos are considered too heavy, When Dream and Day Unite sounds too much like it came out of the '80s (it was released in 1989) and they have a different singer (ironically, the current singer is considered the weakest member of the band and is often The Scrappy or the My Friends... and Zoidberg), Awake is considered unable to live up to its predecessor, Images and Words, Falling into Infinity is too mainstream sounding, Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence is generally well received, though it has just one song that stands out ("The Glass Prison") and the title track, for a 42 minute long song, isn't as epic as expected, leaving some fans a little disappointed. Their most recent album, Black Clouds and Silver Linings has been well received, but the sheer amount of Narm in "The Count of Tuscany" and "A Nightmare to Remember" (along with Portnoy's rendition of a death metal growl that needs a little work) leads some fans to disown that album as well. Not all fans dismiss all albums but the two mentioned above, which makes it even more difficult to know what songs to avoid mentioning out of fear of flame wars. And to make it even more complicated, not all songs on all their albums have similar sounds, so it's even possible for certain songs to be disowned while the album in general is liked. Things can get a little messy there.
  • Many old-school fans (sometimes metalheads, but more often prog nerds and fairweather fans who preferred the band Lighter and Softer) will tell you that their only albums were When Dream and Day Unite, Images and Words, and Awake. Sometimes Scenes from a Memory is included, but they'll still tell you they've never heard of anyone named Jordan Rudess.
• Irish band Altar of Plagues stated in an interview that they disregard the first EP they recorded, the "First Plague" EP. Indeed, if one goes to their MySpace page, only their debut album and the other three EPs they recorded are listed.
• There are Red Hot Chili Peppers fans who only acknowledge the EMI phase (pre-Blood Sugar Sex Magik) - and still, most (including the band) think the debut album is subpar. Some equally favor the WB period (and sometimes Mother's Milk) but this is often because of the popularity of John Frusciante. Others deny that Dave Navarro was once in the band, and Stadium Arcadium is a really divisive album. There is also the belief that Californication was their triumphant Swan Song.
• Opeth is somewhat of a case here. Most people agree that the band we listen to nowadays started to exist with their third, more prog-death album My Arms Your Hearse.
  • But then you ask their most old-school, hardcore fans and their answer will most likely be the band hasn't released anything after Still Life. Both sides don't seem to come to terms with this.
  • A lot of people will claim Watershed was their last album and Heritage definitely does not exist, at all.
• The popular-within-their-own-country band The Tragically Hip has a long discography (13 studio albums and two EPs) that chronicles the evolution of and changes to their sound over the years. Many fans have gotten on and off the bandwagon along the way. For instance, there are some who prefer the grittier sounds of their first three albums, though most fans would have to include their hit-filled fourth album Fully Completely among the canon (sometimes even to the extent of discounting everything else). After that it gets a little blurry. The next two or three albums get softer but still pack in the hits. Some fans draw the line of continuity after Phantom Power (1998) or In Between Evolution (2004). With most of band starting to release solo work/side projects around those points, it starts becoming personal preference as to what is and is not canon.
• Which of Led Zeppelin's works can safely be considered canon? Some fans don't even give them all of LZ I-IV. The safest ground for a fanon would be those four albums and the three that followed them, effectively (fittingly?) ending with "Achilles Last Stand" from 1976's Presence. The albums, reunion shows, and Coda's released afterwards, however...^note Even at their worst, Led Zeppelin was better than most bands out there.
• Talking Heads went through a couple of potentially alienating style changes. Some diehard fans prefer their initial CBGB era sound and refuse to acknowledge the band making it big (selling out?) and chumming around with Brian Eno. By far the larger and more generous fandom appreciated the band and its line-up expansion, as this is the era of their greatest successes like Remain in Light and Stop Making Sense. But the albums that followed are more divisive, and the last two are mostly forgettable save for a few songs. It's worth noting that band tension and solo-career embarking had begun even as they reached the pinnacle of their success together at the beginning of The '80s.
  • Rumors abound of a "reunion" album sans Byrne called No Talking, Just Head under the name "The Heads". Needless to say, it's become one of the many Loch Ness Monsters of music.
• According to a section of the fanbase, Muse's fifth album The Resistance was just a great big self-parody album and that the boys will stop taking the piss and go back to making pwoper music soon enough. Particularly noteworthy when Muse, until that album, had changed their style between every album without alienating many of their older fans. In fact, The Resistance is an odd one out as it could comparatively be regarded as the most predictable, suggesting that a fair few fans dislike it for reasons contrary to what usually fuels dis-continuity. Still, at least a huge quantity of the fanbase is united in their agreement that Muse have never ever had anything to do with the Twilight films, and that they certainly never created the song "Neutron Star Collision," despite some silly rumours to the contrary.
  • And yet another section refuses to acknowledge The Second Law as ever having seen the light of day.
  • Muse themselves disowned any of the music they wrote before work started on Showbiz and have expressed embarrassment when recalling the gigs they played during their very early teenage years when they just wanted to be Nirvana. The fanbase being what it is, you can find loads of scraps of ancient demos and live videos floating around youtube thanks to a few scavengers with internet connections. They also wish they'd never made the first video for their single Uno, although the second, less embarrassing video seems to be more dis-continuity since the frontman never seems seem to remember it was ever made.
• Many Green Day fans would like to pretend Father of All Motherfuckers doesn't exist. The ¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tre! trilogy and 21st Century Breakdown are also prone to erasure. And that's not counting those who think the band broke up in the early 2000s rather than record American Idiot, or that Green Day ceased to exist after Dookie.
• If you ask a Celtic Frost fan about Cold Lake, they will either punch you in the face and tell you to shut up, or give you a strange look and agree that, yes, most lakes are indeed cold.
• Remember when Gamma Ray put out an album called Sigh No More? No? Me neither. Some fans extend this to Ralf Scheepers' whole tenure and pretend they debuted with Land of the Free.
• Ask a metalhead their opinion on Suicide Silence. If you immediately aren't given a look of disgust and spat upon, ask about The Black Crown. You won't be able to wash the bile off you for weeks.
• The Doors never released two albums without Jim Morrison titled Other Voices and Full Circle. Even the band themselves won't own up to this.
• Most Elvis Costello fans would prefer to pretend Goodbye, Cruel World doesn't exist. Even the man himself called it his worst album in the liner notes for the CD re-release.
• Similarly, never mention Under Wraps or A to a Jethro Tull fan — unless you call the latter a solo album by Ian Anderson that features Special Guest Martin Barre. Even their 2001 "best of" collection ignores both.
• Fans of R.E.M. are divided as to when the band split up. Some claim it was after they switched labels from IRS to Warner Brothers, and thus they didn't produce any albums past Document. Others claim that when drummer Bill Berry left, the rest of the band went as well so New Adventures in Hi-Fi was the last R.E.M. album produced. Many in the latter camp though agree that they recorded two reunion albums without Berry (Accelerate and Collapse into Now) before disbanding for real. And some will also tell you that Michael Stipe never shaved his head, and that "Everybody Hurts" was the band's final single, saving themselves the humiliation of abandoning the mellow Alternative Rock roots that made them famous.
  • While we're at it, they never recorded a song called 'Shiny Happy People.' Even the band agrees with that one.
• The vast majority of Morbid Angel fans are still waiting for the veteran Death Metal band to release their "I" album. Others maintain that they broke up after the initial departure of David Vincent, or possibly even after Covenant.
• Kraftwerk is insistent that their catalog begins with Autobahn, completely ignoring Tone Float (released under the band name Organisation, but later amended to Kraftwerk for an unauthorized CD release), Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk 2, and Ralf und Florian — and fans generally ignore those albums as well. None of these albums have seen an official CD release, despite Kraftwerk containing the well-known track "Ruckzuck."
  • Depending on whom you ask, their last new album was either The Man-Machine, Computer World or Techno Pop/Electric Café.
• Brooks & Dunn pretty much disowned their 1999 album Tight Rope, their last album with original producer Don Cook. Most critics thought the album was phoned in and tired sounding; it was also their lowest-selling and did not produce any big hits. Launching it with a tepid cover of John Waite's "Missing You" (an obvious attempt to try and re-make their wildly successful cover of B.W. Stevenson's "My Maria" in 1996) didn't help. Most fans skip straight from If You See Her to Steers & Stripes, as does their second Greatest Hits Album.
• After Slow Motion Daydream, Everclear released a Greatest Hits Album and then evaporated into the ether.
• For some Kate Bush fans, her second album is Never For Ever, a followup as acclaimed as her debut, The Kick Inside. Lionheart? Never heard of it. A few more forgiving lovehounds/fish people will acknowledge the existence of two "standalone" singles - "Hammer Horror" and "Wow".
• Lots of Fairport Convention fans ignore everything without Sandy Denny or Richard Thompson.
• For many fans of The Offspring, the band never began working with Bob Rock, and never released Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace.
  • To others, they never released anything after Smash.
• David Bowie fandom is full of differing opinions on what is and isn't worthwhile due to his fondness for the New Sound Album trope, but albums and periods a newbie probably shouldn't bring up with the established fans are:
  • His pre-Space Oddity work (1964-68), which is heavy on music hall/pop hybrids and occasional novelty numbers like "The Laughing Gnome".
  • His mainstream pop rock work of The '80s. Let's Dance IS the biggest-selling album of his career, but it alienated many fans of his 1970s work and 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). His two follow-ups in that vein, Tonight and Never Let Me Down, are seen as a huge Audience-Alienating Era for him (and by him), and there are plenty who cringe at other work he did during this period, such as the syrupy and incredibly dated-sounding Labyrinth soundtrack (unless you're a nostalgic Gen X-er) and the "Dancing in the Street" duet with Mick Jagger, particularly its Ho Yay-to-the-point-of-ridiculousness music video. The most general consensus one can find is that Let's Dance was good, as were a small handful of pieces from his 80s slump (namely "Loving the Alien" & "Blue Jean" from Tonight, "Never Let Me Down" and especially "Time Will Crawl" from Never Let Me Down, his performance at Live Aid, and maybe his non-Labyrinth movie compositions if you're lucky), but aside from that it's best to pretend that Bowie took a huge breather during those years.
  • To get out of the rut of his post-Let's Dance work, he founded the Hard Rock group Tin Machine. Very, very few fans will give the three Tin Machine albums (two studio, one live) so much as the time of day.
  • Of the three "techno" albums he released in The '90s: Black Tie White Noise, 1. Outside and Earthling. Some fans will admit to one, maybe two, but good luck finding more than a microscopic handful who will regard all three as part of the Bowie catalog.
  • Similarly, his Turn of the Millennium shift to Alternative Rock is divisive; it's hard to find anyone who loves Hours, Heathen, Reality and The Next Day. (Blackstar might get a pass for being his Swan Song)
• To many jazz fans, Wes Montgomery's pop-friendly A&M albums, and a few of his later Verve albums, simply do not exist.
• Regardless of what one's opinion of the Country Music band Lonestar may be, most agree on two things: 1.) the solo songs Richie McDonald did in 2007-2011 never happened, and 2.) the album the other three guys did with Cody Collins replacing him on lead vocals never happened, either.
• Most fans of Cobra Starship say they never recorded Night Shades.
  • Similarly, most fans of Midtown would like to pretend that Gabe Saporta quit music after breaking up instead of starting a Neon Pop project.
• Most Helloween fans claim that the band never released the albums Pink Bubbles Go Ape and Chameleon. Judging from how they never play any songs from either of these albums, the band itself seems to agree. Another group of Helloween fans claim that the band broke up after either Michael Kiske was fired or Kai Hansen quit the band.
  • You'll occasionally find fans who admit the existence of Pink Bubbles, arguing that it's a decent album that gets underrated because of the excellence of its predecessors. On the other hand, nobody will acknowledge the existence of Chameleon, with the possible exception of Kiske himself (who included acoustic versions of a few tracks from it on his Past in Different Ways album).
• Ask an Accept fan what they think of Eat The Heat or David Reece, and you'll most likely just get a blank stare.
• Despite what the internet may tell you, Grave Digger fans deny that the band ever changed their name to Digger and released a pop metal album.
• It is pretty much universal opinion among Jag Panzer fans that there is no album called Dissident Alliance. Paradoxically, while many will admit to having heard of an album called Chain of Command, the consensus still remains that Harry Conklin is the only singer the band has ever had.
• As far as most fans are concerned, Scott Walker recorded no solo material between 1969's Scott 4 and 1984's Climate of Hunter. Those five albums of mostly covers he recorded after the failure of the self-penned Scott 4? Never happened.
• The Rutles' fictitious backstory is PACKED with contradictions (with both sides of the coin even appearing in contradictory fashion in the original 1978 TV movie), mainly due to Neil Innes and Eric Idle's different opinions on how stupidly silly their story should be. (Eric was content on filling the Rutles' back catalogue with Beatles titles now altered to include either references to food, or the word "Rut," while Neil Innes preferred subtle and intelligent humor.) Just a few examples....
  • The Rutles' equivalent of "All You Need Is Love": Neil Innes - "Love Life". Eric Idle - "All You Need Is Lunch."
  • The Rutles' equivalent of "I Am The Walrus": Neil Innes - "Piggy In The Middle". Eric Idle - "I Am The Waitress."
  • The Rutles' equivalent of "Twist and Shout": Neil Innes - "Number One." Eric Idle - "Twist and Rut."
  • The Rutles' equivalent of Apple Corps: Neil Innes - Rutle Records. Eric Idle - Banana Records. (Making the logo gag a bit too literal.)
  • The Rutles' equivalent of "Sgt. Pepper": Neil Innes - "Major Happy's Up and Coming Once Upon A Good Time Band." Eric Idle - "Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band." (In the terrible cash-in film The Rutles 2, which had no involvement from Innes, Idle actually had the gall to play the track "Major Happy" while discussing the "Sgt. Rutter" album, despite originally damning the Archaeology project.)
  • In the first (collaborative) film, Maharishi equivalent Arthur Sultan was a Ouija board mystic. In The Rutles 2, he became the owner of an Indian restaurant... thus allowing more forced food jokes.
  • The Rutles' equivalent of "When I'm Sixty Four": Neil Innes - "Back In '64". Eric Idle - "If I Sixty-Nine". (Groan.)
  • At one point, Eric Idle shoved aside the whole "the Rutles' songs sound like Beatles songs" concept, putting out two uninteresting novelty tracks as a 'Rutles' single without Neil's involvement.
• "Rap fans refuse to acknowledge the album, mainly due to the ill-conceived 'gangsta' image makeover that accompanied it." The preceeding sentence applies equally to MC Hammer (The Funky Headhunter), Run–D.M.C. (Down With The King) and Will Smith (Homebase)^note Smith's fans simply pretend "Summertime" was a stand-alone single.
• Ask any fan of Disturbed how many albums they've released, and the answer you get is almost perfectly, inversely proportional to how much of a dedicated Heavy Metal and/or Death Metal aficionado they are. They're always acknowledged in chronological order to boot, as they progress from nearly-incoherent rage, to rage at specific targets, to more generalized disgust with the world but a desire to see it get better.
• Oh, Queensrÿche, where to begin? Acknowledgement of their work through Operation: Mindcrime is pretty much universal, but beyond that there's not much consensus. Most will agree that they released an album called Empire, and most of those people will also admit that Promised Land existed. There's a sharp drop-off at that point, but you can still find a reasonable number who argue that they released an album after that called Hear in the Now Frontier. However, most of those people will tell you that Chris DeGarmo's decision to leave then resulted in the band splitting up, so they certainly couldn't have released a string of albums after that, though some will acknowledge that they briefly got back together to record Tribe. Even the few who insist that they did in fact release material without DeGarmo will deny ever having heard of an album called Dedicated to Chaos. That's not even getting started on the two 2013 releases, released by two entirely different bands who both have the right to use the name until the lawsuit is settled, though this is at least a bit more justified since the court's ruling will almost certainly result in one of those albums becoming Canon Discontinuity as well.
  • It probably doesn't help that the 2013 releases are also subject to a SERIOUS Broken Base, due to the two aforementioned different versions of the band also performing in sounds that are very different from the other: Tate's version was more in line with the stuff from "Here in the Now Frontier" onwards, while the other version was somewhat like their stuff up to "Promised Land".
• Dead Kennedys fans would rather pretend that the band is no longer together. "Jello Biafra was never replaced!"
• Bob Dylan fans would generally agree that his essential canon is: all of his 60s albums (except sometimes Nashville Skyline), Blood on the Tracks, and the albums from 1997's Time Out of Mind to the present^note with Christmas in the Heart as an eccentric outlier. Everything else is in YMMV territory, with 1987's Down In The Groove probably being his least loved album.
• The original lineup of The Byrds reunited for a Self-Titled Album in 1973. It wasn't received well by critics or fans, and everyone involved would just as soon forget it ever happened. Other fans will argue that they formally ended after their Swan Song with David Crosby, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, or their lowest charting album, Dr. Byrds and Mr. Hyde.
• Some Madonna fans argue that Erotica was not an album, but rather just a cheap tie-in to Sex.
  • Other fans would consider that her first four albums (Madonna, Like a Virgin, True Blue and Like a Prayer) as the only albums she ever did.
  • Some fans argue that she only did 10 albums total.
  • Most Madonna fans pretend American Life never happened (though there is a Vocal Minority that lauds it as a "misunderstood classic")
• A noticeably large camp of Michael Jackson fans don't consider his 2010 posthumous album Michael as canon, as some of his relatives are uncertain whether the vocals from the album are really his (Jackson did have dental problems and other health issues that had a noticeably poor effect on his voice near the end of his life, as illustrated from the rehearsal footage from the This is It concerts, though that doesn't stop fans from attributing the debated vocals to soundalike Jason Malachi) This became excabarated when a class-action lawsuit was filed over the allegedly fake "Casico tracks" ("Breaking News", "Keep Your Head Up" and "Monster"), resulting in Sony eventually removing the alleged forgeries in 2022, effectively exiling them from Jackson's musical canon.
  • Other fans would consider his post-Motown, pre-death era (from Off the Wall to Invincible) as canon.
  • Some fans would accept only his first eight albums as canon, ignoring HIStory: Past, Present, and Future -- Book I and Invincible.
  • Some fans would accept his first nine albums and his remix album (which did have new material) Blood in the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix as canon, ignoring Invincible. In general, of his Epic output, Invincible seems to be the most divisive of the bunch.
  • While Xscape was a much better-regarded posthumous album than Michael, you'll still run into the occasional group of fans who prefer to pretend it never happened, mainly because Jackson himself was a notorious perfectionist and never got to have the final say in the official versions of the songs on both posthumous albums thanks to them being, well, posthumous albums.
  • There's also a good chunk of fans who prefer to ignore 2017's Scream, with reasons typically varying from the same as the above-mentioned Xscape to the fact that it's a remix album as opposed to a third album of unreleased MJ material.
• Most fans of The Moody Blues (including both "official" websites) deny that they were ever fronted by Denny Laine, or recorded The Magnificent Moodies. This is probably because that album was indeed a blues album, very different from their familiar soft-rock sound, and was remaindered within five years of its release; and when it is availiable on CD, it is mono.
• Fleetwood Mac had at least two different eras, at least as different in sound (if not more so) as the Moody Blues example above. (This means that if buying a "Best of Fleetwood Mac" album — of which there have been at least two from each era — you probably need to check the track listing.) Fans of the Peter Green (blues) era tend to deny that the Christine McVie (disco) era ever happened, and vice-versa.
  • This is just the beginning. Some people enjoy both the Green and Buckingham/Nicks eras but deny the Bob Welch years ever happened, a few people even enjoy the Welch years the most and deny one or both of the others. Then there's the two albums the band recorded in the 90s, the first without Buckingham and the second without him OR Nicks...
• Fear Factory fans almost universally pretend that Digimortal never happened.
• Many Moonshake fans consider the band to have ended with the departure of Margaret Fiedler. It didn't help that the remaining members instituted a "no guitars" policy and opted for a Genre Shift into a more jazz-influenced sound.
• Fans of The Monkees normally ignore everything after The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees since almost all of their fans agree on the five albums up to and including it. What is especially denied of existence consists mainly of the unoriginal Instant Replay and the non-charting Changes, both of which were ignored on the group's 1995 greatest hits CD (although both albums are mentioned, no tracks from either are on it).
  • Another theory is that once the show ended, the band broke up. Since Birds was the last album recorded before the show's cancellation, this is generally an overlap with the above.
  • There are others who are cool with everything but the two "reunion" albums, Pool It! and Justus. After all, the Monkees were from The '60s.
  • Others say Head finally broke the camel's back, as it's the last "official" album with Peter Tork and thus the original quartet.
  • Alternately, Instant Replay and The Monkees Present are "proper" albums by the Monkees, but Changes, having the musical talent pretty much drained, is by the Monkees In Name Only.
• Fans of The Hollies will generally state that they ceased to exist after either Graham Nash or Allan Clarke left.
• Most of *NSYNC's fandom refuses to acknowledge "Gone" as one of the group's singles as it's only sung by Justin Timberlake, rather than the Vocal Tag Team normally employed. It was seen by the fandom as the point where the group was ending and set up Justin's solo career.
• Ask an Aborted fan about Strychnine.213 and be prepared to potentially have to dodge a torrent of vomit. Ask Sven de Caluwe and you'll get much the same reaction. There's a reason why no one ever laments the fact that they haven't played anything off of the album live in over five years.
• Most fans of The Who agree that the band ceased to exist after Who Are You, the last album with Keith Moon.
• Many people like to say Kelly Clarkson does not have an album called My December, including her record label.
• The album Alaska is a big divider for Between the Buried and Me. Death metal fans will argue that they disbanded after it's release, while prog fans will argue that it was their debut and their first two albums never existed. It's pretty much universally agreed that they never did a cover album, though.
  • There are also fans of the band's prog era, who are fine with The Silent Circus, but would prefer to pretend the band's self-titled début does not exist. The band themselves would seem to sympathise with this viewpoint.
• Black Sabbath — where to begin? Only the Ozzy albums exist, only the Dio albums exist, only the Ozzy and Dio albums exist, only the albums with Geezer on bass (which includes all the Dio and Ozzy plus a couple of others). Or everything but Never Say Die, Technical Ecstasy (which never happened), Seventh Star (which was only ever intended to be an Iommi solo album, and sounds nothing like Sabbath, but the studio strong-armed him into using the more recognizable name), and Forbidden (which presents the already highly controversial Tony Martin-fronted version of the band at their absolute worst). Also, some include the Devil You Know album by "Heaven & Hell" to be part of the Black Sabbath discography. (Paranoid obviously exists, but the cover art, which was hated by everyone including the band from day one, does not.)
  • Basically the only universal consensus Sabbath fans have been able to reach is that there is no album called Forbidden. Every other album, no matter how hated by the majority of the fanbase, seems to have its defenders, but even the folks who love everything else they've ever done will disown that one.
• Yes, Virginia, The Sweet existed before "Blockbuster" (they even had a #1 hit). Thank God once for Executive Meddling.
• Most fans of the Velvet Underground, including the band members themselves, refuse to acknowledge the existence of Squeeze, the last official VU album, where literally nobody except Doug Yule plays on the record. It has never been re-released, as virtually nobody is interested in it.
  • It doesn't help that even Yule didn't really want the album to bear the Velvet Underground name, but was forced into it by Executive Meddling, the villain here being their manager Steve Sesnick.
• Fans of Buddy Holly will generally agree that the Crickets broke up once he died.
• Cat Stevens fans often disavow any knowledge of his first two albums, Matthew and Son and New Masters. However, he has played songs from both albums, but less frequently than his more popular songs like "Wild World" and "Peace Train." Others ignore the less-than-stellar Numbers and Back to Earth (but not Izitso, the album between them, or the albums he has recorded as Yusuf Islam, which are often listed as a separate artist despite the two being the same person). Basically, his output consists of everything between and including Mona Bone Jakon and Buddha and the Chocolate Box (with Foreigner being the only questionable album), Izitso and his rock albums as Yusuf Islam.
• While fans of The Rolling Stones generally agree everything up to and including 1972's Exile on Main St. is essential (save for maybe two exceptions, see below) it gets messy after that. The band's no-frills blues rock was rapidly going out of style on top-40 radio in the mid-70s, leaving them in a precarious place. Not sure what to do, they played it safe by continuing their usual sound with the subsequent albums Goats Head Soup (1973) and It's Only Rock 'n Roll (1974). While both hit #1 on the Billboard 200, of their singles during that time, only the out-of-character ballad "Angie" made the top 10. This can be shocking compared to their previous decade of success. It was then they started experimenting with more top-40 friendly influences such as disco/funk and leaning more heavily into genres they'd only flirted with in the past, like soul/R&B. The discontinuity begins here. Fans fall like this:
  • Goats and Only mark the end of the Stones as a great rock band; they are mediocre filler albums where the music spins its wheels and goes nowhere new. They never recovered.
  • Goats and Only are worthy, if a bit boring, additions to the Stones catalogue (because the sound still falls close to the band's roots), but nothing after that because they leaned into commercial pandering.
  • 1976's Black and Blue was a successful display of radio accessibility without sacrificing their blues influences. They sold out after that.
  • They must have been doing somethng right with 1978's Some Girls, because it netted their last #1 hit, "Miss You", and hey, it's catchy! This is the only "pop" album they actually put their hearts into and gave up after that.
  • 1980's Emotional Rescue is a continuation of the Some Girls sound, so it's okay to include.
  • 1981's Tattoo You is the last album where they tried to experiment without selling out or resting on their laurels, at least on most of the tracks. It's all downhill from here.
  • This is where much smaller subsets come in. A select few will accept the two highly-commercial albums between Tattoo and 1989's better-recieved return-to-form Steel Wheels where they go towards dance-rock/new wave ^note 1983's Undercover and 1986's Dirty Work, and even then, probably only as Camp. After that, though, good luck fiding fans willing to defend the stuff post-Wheels as anything but the band just going through the motions, save for some love to singles like "Anybody Seen My Baby?", "Don't Stop", and "Doom and Gloom".
  • Finally, any combination of the above fans may disregard their flings with psychedelia, Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request, dismissing them as misguided New Sound Albums.
• Just ask a Nirvana fan about their debut album, Bleach, or Chad Channing. Thought so.
• To many opera fans, Giuseppe Verdi has only five major works before Rigoletto — Nabucco, I lombardi alla prima crociata, Ernani, Macbeth and Luisa Miller. They'll generally ignore Aroldo, too.
• Similarly, the catalog of Richard Wagner begins for most at Der fliegende Holländer rather than Die Feen. Some people will start at Rienzi, but there is no Broken Base here as everything following Rienzi (including Der fliegende Holländer) is part of Wagner's canon and Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot were considered outside of Wagner's realm.
• Regardless of what the Neapolitan nobility said, Gaetano Donizetti never ever composed an opera titled Buondelmonte. Even the composer himself refused to stage it thereafter except as Maria Stuarda.
• Fans of Gioachino Rossini are pretty divided as to whether or not he actually composed any music after William Tell. As for his operatic career, here is what people generally omit, in chronological order:
  • Aureliano in Palmira, which people only remember because Rossini reused its overture in The Barber of Seville;
  • Sigismondo, a massive failure at its premiere in 1814;
  • La gazzetta, his only comedy written for Naples;
  • Adelaide di Borgogna, a work scarcely performed in Italy and almost never performed abroad;
  • Adina, which he never saw in his lifetime due to it being performed only a few times in Lisbon;
  • Eduardo e Cristina, a pastiche of his earlier works and therefore one of his least original operas; and
  • Maometto secondo, a work that vanished forever once it became Le siege de Corinthe in 1826.
• Fans of Ludwig van Beethoven refuse to acknowledge a tenth symphony despite what various sources will tell you. The same can be said for Gustav Mahler.
• A lot of Simon & Garfunkel fans ignore their debut album, Wednesday Morning 3 A.M., and pretty much kick it off with Sounds of Silence.
• Fans of The Animals almost always agree that they never reunited in the 90s without Eric Burdon.
• The Yardbirds can be divided into three groups: the Eric Clapton years, the Jeff Beck years, and the Jimmy Page years. The former two are easily accepted by fans, but with only one album (Little Games) and no hits, the third is not. Led Zeppelin fans may disagree.
• There is some debate over whether or not Modest Mussorgsky actually composed three operas. It's unanimous that one of them is Boris Godunov, but some fans are leery of the fact that Khovanshchina and Sorochintsy Fair were incomplete because he Died During Production.
• Six Feet Under fans universally like to pretend that the 3 Graveyard Classics albums never happened.
• Some fans of The Ramones will say that they never released a 60s-themed Cover Album called Acid Eaters. They never worked on End of the Century with Phil Spector, either, and Dee Dee was never threatened with a gun.
• Ever think of seeing Vincenzo Bellini's Zaira any time soon? Neither do I.
• Remember when Kansas released the albums Power and In The Spirit Of Things? Neither do they. Other fans will tell you the band released no more albums after either Steve Walsh or Robby Steinhardt left, depending on who you ask. More casual listeners will tell you their first album was Leftoverture. While it was the first album they released that got mainstream success, they actually released three albums prior to that.
• Most Katy Perry fans ignore the Christian albums she recorded under the name Katy Hudson.
• Depeche Mode fans are usually divided on what's real and what's not.
  • There's a very small number of fans who think Speak & Spell and A Broken Frame only happened.
  • The Alan Wilder era (1982-1995) only accepted as Fanon. While everything pre-1982 and post-1995 didn't happen.
  • Then, there's the majority of fans who accept the newer albums, but think Sound of the Universe was their weakest, and that its single "Peace" didn't happen.
  • Especially the British music press tends to pretend that A Broken Frame was Depeche Mode's debut album, and Vince Clarke has never been a band member.
• Elvis Presley fans refuse to acknowledge that he ever recorded a spoken-word album called Having Fun With Elvis on Stage.
• Massacre fans will insist that they never recorded a disastrous groove metal album called Promise in 1996. Kam Lee himself also refuses to include the album as part of his output, even going as far to say that he left the band during recording due to severe dissatisfaction with the album (though given his Jerkass nature, he probably made this up to seem cool).
• So how many AC/DC fans out there say their favorite singer in the group is Dave Evans? Exactly.
• Some fans completely prefer to ignore the Michael McDonald soft rock era of the Doobie Brothers. The band, however, regularly plays those songs in concert and the songs tend to show up on compilations, although Tom Johnston only handles backup vocals when they're performed, in part because his voice and singing style isn't well suited to them. Bear in mind that McDonald was brought into the band out of necessity — Johnston left the band in 1975 only because of health issues but they were still contractually obligated to record another album at the time.
  • A portion of this group who likes the biggest hit of the McDonald era, "What a Fool Believes," but still favor Johnston over him may or may not consider it a McDonald stand-alone single featuring various members of the Doobie Brothers, much like the Yes example with Drama above.
• For any of you who have heard rumors circulating about The Kinks reuniting without Dave: it could just as easily fall into this territory. Of course, there's a reason why Ray wants it that way...
• Oh boy, what should we say about Electric Light Orchestra? Some of us want to omit the first two ELO albums, others want to skip Discovery (with the exception of "Don't Bring Me Down") and Xanadu, a few more stop with Time, several ignore the reunion album Zoom...
• Do not ask any die-hard Village People fans about The Renaissance Album or Can't Stop the Music.
• Giacomo Meyerbeer never wrote Jephtas Gelübde, Wirth und Gast or Das Brandenburger Tor. Even his biggest fans will deny their existence.
• To most of his fans there is no album by Elton John titled Empty Sky. There is also some debate over whether or not he recorded a disco album called Victim of Love.
• There are quite a number of Mott the Hoople fans who disregard the two poorly received albums they recorded simply as Mott – never mind the two albums afterwards released under the name English Lions.
• Some fans of Taylor Swift would like to forget that she has made an attempt to switch from country music to pop music, and some fans who prefer the original recording albums would like to ignore her re-recorded Taylor's Version albums.
• Any takers of Big Brother and the Holding Company without Janis Joplin? Didn't think so.
• After Good Singin', Good Playin', Grand Funk Railroad broke up and was never heard of again.
• Alice Cooper exists in two phases, the band and the solo artist. The solo artist phase has several phases of its own: original solo/theatric phase up to From the Inside; the New Wave/Lost Weekend era, from Flush the Fashion through Da Da; the comeback/hair metal period from Constrictor through Hey Stoopid; and everything since. Each period has its fans and it’s detractors. Love It To Death was the first album by the band, and most certainly NOT the third. There was never a band called Billion Dollar Babies, nor was there an album by them called Battle Axe.
• Who wants any Foghat albums after Boogie Motel? Good.
• No one really wants to remember that Alice in Chains started off as a generic Glam Metal band. Less common, but still prevalent, are those fans who won't acknowledge the albums that came out after lead singer Layne Staley's death. A smaller still group of fans want to ignore everything after Dirt.
• Plenty of fans of The Beach Boys wish that Smile saw the light of day. Another group considers Pet Sounds their last album (with "Good Vibrations" and "Kokomo" released as standalone singles), and another group is only comfortable with the Beach Boys who recorded songs about girls, cars and surfing.
  • Other fans will acknowledge the existence of an official version of Smile, but will disregard everything between Pet Sounds and it, as well as everything after it.
  • Some fans like some of their 70s efforts like "Feel Flows" and "Sail On, Sailor".
• Many Mike Posner fans, and Mike Posner himself, act as if his first mixtape, Reflections of a Lost Teen, does not exist, to the point that Mike Posner refers to his second mixtape as his "debut", and it isn't even mentioned on Posner's Wikipedia discography page. It is, at least, mentioned on his own Wikipedia page.
• According to many fans, the nucleus of the Little River Band is vocalist Glenn Shorrock, along with guitarists Graehame Goble and Beeb Birtles (adding drummer Derek Pellicci is acceptable). Once Shorrock, Goble, and Birtles left, the LRB ceased to exist.
• A non-Western example: Many fans of the Hong Kong rock band Beyond ignore anything made after the tragic death of lead singer Wong Ka Kui.
• Rascal Flatts never released a song called "Bob That Head". You just imagined a song where Gary LeVox screeched out the Accidental Innuendo of a title twice.
• Stone Temple Pilots were a great 90s band. Too bad Scott Weiland died and the band never, ever replaced him.
• Hardcore Fall Out Boy fans are pretty fickle. Either their first album is all that exists from them, their first two, or their first four. They've changed up their style so drastically between each that fans that like all four of them equally are pretty rare to come across unless you specifically look for them. Also, their more overtly Pop exploits since 2013 don't exist either and the band ended after Folie for some.
  • Even most of the fans who disagree on those will completely ignore Fall Out Boy's Evening Out With Your Girlfriend, if they're aware of its release in the first place. On rare occasions, "Honorable Mention" is allowed to exist (and they continued to play it at shows at least through the From Under the Cork Tree era) but the Early-Installment Weirdness and the label screwing the band out of its royalties leave most people — from the fans to the band themselves — happy to pretend Take This to Your Grave was their first release.
• There is some debate among classical music fans about how many ballets Igor Stravinsky actually composed. The first three (The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring) are definitely considered canon, but the existence of his later ballets, especially after Pulcinella, becomes more questionable.
• According to almost every member of Deep Purple, they did make a pretty good album with Tommy Bolin after Stormbringer, but it shouldn't be considered a Deep Purple album.
• Big fans of The Guess Who would argue the group's last album was American Woman (the group's last album with Randy Bachman), and that all the big hits thereafter like "Hand Me Down World" and "Albert Flasher" were simple single releases. Other fans argue that the band didn't exist until the release of Wheatfield Soul, their first album with Burton Cummings.
• "The 27 Club" means that it's not uncommon for fans of a musician who, in their old age, is releasing horrible material and/or has done a political 180 from the set of values their fans associated them with, to 'agree' that they died at age 27.
• Most Culture Club fans prefer to believe that From Luxury to Heartache & Don't Mind If I Do don't exist. Some fans ignore the existence of Boy George's solo career, as well.
• A good number of Duran Duran fans ignore everything between Notorious and Pop Trash, with the argument being that the band ceased to exist until the "classic" lineup reunited in 2001.
  • Some hardcore elitist lovers of the New Romantic era (which was considered more artistic & innovative than the later New Wave scene) ignore everything they did after their first album, alongside ignoring everything Spandau Ballet did after their debut LP as well.
  • Other fans argue that everything between the 1993 "wedding album" and Astronaut never happened.
• Oh, Neil Young. We learn to expect practically anything from him, not just sweet ballads and hymns or massively primordial rock compositions that go on and on and on FOR EVER. These are the sounds that mean "Neil Young" to many people. But even many of his most ardent devotees, not to mention his record company^note Geffen, not his usual Reprise. Geffen sued him for producing an album that "didn't sound like Neil Young".drew the line at Trans (1982). It was filled with experimental electronics, octave separators and Morse code, and Neil singing through a vocoder. Even knowing that he wrote it while searching for a way for his son Ben, who cannot speak, to communicate, doesn't keep fans from wishing it didn't exist. Over the decades Trans has become recognized and some of its songs even covered by other artists.
• Rap fans of the mid to late 90s want to forget that Dr. Dre's Aftermath ever happened. And while Dre was heartbroken by the backlash of his sequel to The Chronic, he eventually sided with the fans and discontinued the album himself when he boasted on The Chronic 2001 "Still Dre" that he didn't fall off, his last album was The Chronic, completely disgarding The Aftermath.
• Many Billy Joel fans vehemently deny he was ever in an acid rock band named Attila before becoming a successful solo artist. Others argue that his career started with Piano Man, ignoring Cold Spring Harbor, or that Storm Front consists of "We Didn't Start the Fire" (or "Leningrad") and nothing else.
• Fans of the Black Eyed Peas refuse to acknowledge that "Let's Get It Started" was originally recorded as "Let's Get Retarded".
• REO Speedwagon: To some, the band ceased to exist after Nine Lives. The band's sound underwent a drastic shift in 1980 with Hi-Infidelity, becoming more mainstream and radio-friendly. To others, Hi-Infidelity or Wheels Are Turnin' was their last album.
• Sepultura has many fans who think the band ended when Max Cavalera left.
• Fans of Sean Combs and Led Zeppelin unanimously insist that "Come With Me", Combs and Jimmy Page's "Kashmir"-sampling collaboration for the Godzilla (1998) soundtrack, never happened.
• Jean-Michel Jarre has this a lot due to his New Sound Album tendencies:
  • If you've discovered him in the late '70s, chances are he has only ever made two albums (Oxygène and Équinoxe). Or maybe three; either you accepted the following Magnetic Fields, but you were alienated away by everything that followed, or you accepted Oxygène 7-13 because it's the closest to Oxygène and Equinoxe in sound.
  • If you've discovered him in The '80s or the early '90s, for example through Ed Starink's Synthesizer Greatest series, chances are he has only ever made the nine studio albums from Oxygène to Oxygène 7-13. Besides, Revolutions, Hong Kong and possibly The Concerts In China have never been digitally remastered. That, and Jarre's last live performance was Oxygen In Moscow.
  • Even if you acknowledge Metamorphoses, Oxygène 3 and Equinoxe Infinity, chances are you disregard everything else he made in the 21st century. If he ever was to play "Vintage" at one of his concerts, you couldn't tell which album it's from, if any. The existence of Sessions 2000, Geometry Of Love, Téo & Téa, Aero, the 30th anniversary Music/{{Oxygène}} re-release etc. will only come to your mind if you happen to take a look into your Jarre shrine where they've been sitting ever since that one single time you've played them.
  • Solidarność Live has never happened. Jarre's 2004 double concert in Beijing probably hasn't either.^note Hardcore fans dislike these concerts for being only-too-obvious playback shows, and more casual fans don't know they've ever taken place.
  • Only die-hard Jarre collectors who have already got everything else acknowledge the existence of Jarre's pre-Oxygène material, but they mostly only acquire it in order to expand their collections, never to listen to any of it. The same goes for the masses of remixes from The '90s, also because EDM doesn't necessarily age well.
• According to a lot of old-school electronic music aficionados, Tangerine Dream have only ever made four studio albums: Phaedra, Rubycon, Stratosfear and the Sorcerer soundtrack. These are their only true Berlin School/Kosmische Musik albums.^note Up until Atem, they were a krautrock band like so many others. On their next album, Cyclone, they committed the utterly heretical atrocities of including vocals with lyrics and, even worse, composing their music, i.e. doing some planning ahead instead of just improvising into the blue. They essentially turned into a pop group.
• A lot of Marina Diamandis fans don't like her albums from Electra Heart onwards, they think that she sold out and want her to go back to her indie roots.

• Many Music/Suagababes fans don't like Sweet 7, they felt that the album was too Americanized while other fans hated it simply because there were no original members left in the band when it was released.

• Charli XCX has a divided fandom, with some fans not liking the hyperpop sound she did from Vroom Vroom to How I'm Feeling Now and liked that she went back to a more mainstream pop sound with Crash, while other fans only like her hyperpop stuff and see Crash as selling out.
• Upon release of Alphaville's Crazyshow in 2003 and the revelation that recently departed bandmember Bernhard Lloyd was not involved with it, some fans considered it a Marian Gold solo album, since all other contributors were either outside collaborators such as Rainer Bloss, or members of the touring band, such as Martin Lister. At the time the touring band was not considered the real Alphaville,^note This is partly due to the band's management vaguely explaining there were two Alphavilles, live and studio, whenever asked about the lineup situation, and also partly due to fans confusing Bernhard Lloyd's work on the first Atlantic Popes album with work being done for a future Alphaville studio album. but those sentiments started to wane in the leadup to 2010's Catching Rays on Giant. Nevertheless, there is still a small faction who consider everything from Crazyshow onward Marian Gold solo material.

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