"Unlistenable"

Ween (Elektra, 1992-2000)

Ween is probably an odd one out among most of these bands in that them getting signed was perhaps inevitable - as odd as their music is, they're one of the few bands featured here that always had at least a little pop potential. But for Elektra to sign them in 1992 seemed like commercial suicide. They had just released their second album The Pod, recorded while the two (at the time) members Dean and Gene Ween were sick in their apartment with mononucleosis, resulting in an album of shrill distorted guitar noises, vocals sung through various digitally heightened and lowered pitches, songs dedicated to inside jokes that ended as quickly as they began, and a drum machine that sounded like it had been dropped underwater, all filtered through deliberately flawed production to make a truly sickly-sounding album. Oh, and also it was 76 minutes long. But at the end of the day, most of the album still had pop potential - just filtered through perhaps the least accessible method possible.
Perhaps even weirder were the circumstances under which they were signed - while they were of course the result of an Elektra A&R representative's search for "alternative" bands, they received approval from label president Bob Krasnow himself, who had previously worked with similarly oddball acts like Captain Beefheart and Sun Ra and sincerely liked the band because of their bizarre and unserious nature. And with that, Elektra released Pure Guava in November 1992, an album that only sounded marginally better than The Pod (and in some cases was actually way stranger). In spite of everything, the album got reasonably positive (if somewhat baffled) reviews and had a minor radio hit in the bossa nova-styled helium-vocaled ditty "Push th' Little Daisies". Now the bad news begins...
Ween had no luck with label folks. Krasnow and the A&R rep who signed them got replaced soon after Guava's release with people who didn't understand the band and were less than willing to learn how. The new folks did give Ween something they previously lacked, though - a proper recording studio, making their 1994 follow-up Chocolate and Cheese easily their best-sounding album to date, both in terms of production and radio sensibility, even if it still maintained the often pitch-shifted vocals and dinky drum machine beats. Finally feeling somewhat at home again, Ween recorded 1996's 12 Golden Country Greats, a half-jokey half-sincere country album born out of their sincere love for the genre. It was also their first album with no drum machine, being recorded with a slew of Nashville session musicians.
Then the Elektra staff got replaced again in 1997. The new folks came in under the impression Ween only played country, and were understandably flummoxed when they recieved The Mollusk, a nautical-themed album featuring a newly-finalized full band performing sea shanties, prog-rock jams and distorted takes on show tunes, among other difficult-to-promote tunes. While the album would find an eventual hit in "Ocean Man", being featured in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie in 2004 and becoming an internet meme in 2016, the label had no clue how to promote the album and it ended up with mediocre sales and no radio airplay, inciting the label to put pressure on Ween to make something consumer-friendly.
The last straw with Elektra came with the band's first live album, Paintin' the Town Brown, in 1999. The album was originally intended to be released exclusively through the band's website as an exclusive item for super-fans, with a tracklist featuring multiple very early live recordings, completely different interpretations of songs, and a second disc consisting of two half-hour jam sessions - one of a 2-minute song about poop and another of a random B-side. Desperate to release something from the band, as their "pop album" was taking longer than expected, Elektra took the live album and released it themselves, meaning this album intended for diehard fans was now being shipped en masse to stores and critics. At this point Ween was sick and tired of dealing with the label, and upon the release of 2000's White Pepper, which was easily their poppiest album, they left Elektra to gladly return to independent labels and self-releasing. While it is a blessing that Ween was given the creative freedom they had, the group's constant scuffles with Elektra staff and demands to conform after having been signed just for being themselves shows how even signings that seem like wins for everyone can still end up going sour.

Stereolab (Elektra, 1993-2005)

Stereolab is definitely one of the more sensible signings from this era, but perhaps not at the time of their signing. When Elektra scooped up the French avant-pop band in early 1993, they had just released their EP The Groop Played Space Age Batchelor Pad Music on soon-to-be prolific indie label Too Pure. The release was easily their most accessible to that point after a series of singles and one studio album, being a quick half-hour slice of ambient indie-pop with heavy influence from 60s lounge music and krautrock and a retro-futuristic aesthetic. And Too Pure had already provided Elektra a minor hit in their localization of fellow throwback indie-rockers Th’ Faith Healers, so what harm was another?
Their first release on Elektra, the second album Transient Random Noise-Bursts with Announcements, just barely resembled the EP that had gotten them signed. While the lounge and krautrock influences and retro-future stylings were still in full force and the songs had poppy structures and sensibilities, the music itself was a noisy, experimental slab of distorted buzzsaw guitars, droning Moog synths and drums at their punchiest, all connected by Laetitia Sadier’s melodic yet unusual vocal hooks (due to her not being a native English speaker). The album’s lone single was “Jenny Ondioline”, a multi-part 18-minute epic condensed to 4 minutes. Despite everything that seemed to be against it, the album was a success on all fronts; critics adored it and it sold well both stateside and in the UK, where it reached the Top 10 Independent Albums chart.
Clearly Elektra had a hitmaker on their hands, if an unconventional one, and this would only be further proven by 1994’s Mars Audiac Quintet, which saw the band begin to move away from their noisier roots and cross over further into the world of pop. The album incorporated even more older influences into their sound, being an unironic tribute to 60s space age pop combined with their artsy indie-pop sound. The album charted higher and was similarly lauded by critics, further increasing the group’s kinship with the label.
All this led to the band’s finest hour in the latter half of the decade, with 1996’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup and 1997’s Dots and Loops. These releases saw the group fully shed their harsher early krautrock sound and embrace their love of 60s pop music, delivering upbeat, sincere indie pop that saw them revisiting easy listening music in their own electronic-tinged indie fashion. This album saw the group at their peak critically and commercially, with the latter album sending the group into the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time and reaching #2 on the Heatseekers chart. By this point the band's friendly relationship with Elektra was completely solidified, and they would continue to work with and release albums through the label until its closure in 2005, by which point they had gained enough clout to be able to self-release through their own label Duophonic Super 45s.

Beck (Geffen, 1994-2008)

Beck is definitely a success story of 90s major-label signings, but it's easy to forget that his early work was pretty strange. While of course he got signed for the surreal folk-rap slacker anthem "Loser", at that point basically none of his other songs sounded like that. "Loser" was a song cleaned up by his producer friend Carl Stevenson, while all of his other songs at the time were bluesy folk tunes that were intentionally low quality in terms of both production and musicianship, with titles like "MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack", "The F**ked Up Blues" and "Satan Gave Me a Taco", and an appropriately sardonic sense of humor inspired by Dada art and Beck's own experiences with homelessness and dead-end jobs. The surprise success of "Loser" led to indie label Bong Load struggling to produce enough copies to match demands and a major bidding war from major labels, with Geffen coming out on top and signing Beck in December 1993, offering promises of full creative freedom and permission to continue releasing music on other labels.
Less than four months later, at which point "Loser" had cracked the Billboard Hot 100 and was getting frequent MTV airplay, Beck would release his first studio album Mellow Gold on Geffen's alternative label DGC. Beck's creative freedom was on full display - songs ranged from abstract layered raps ("Soul Suckin' Jerk", "Beercan") to ear-piercing noise jams ("Sweet Sunshine", "Mutherf**ker") to many of the anti-folk tunes Beck had come to be known for (the most notable being "Truckdrivin Neighbors Downstairs", which was not cleaned up from its original tape recording and features a guerrilla recording of Beck's neighbors fighting and throwing things at each other). While critics were unsure what to make of the album, it naturally sold gangbusters and became representative of the 90s "slacker" and DIY scenes despite its major- label backing.
Beck's creative freedom spurred by the guaranteed success of "Loser" led him to explore multiple genres without sacrificing his image and while still experiencing major success. Beck's following releases on DGC featured him exploring genres such as hip hop, dance music, electronic music, garage rock and more traditional folk, injecting them with his own unique style while maintaining accessibility. Beck released seven more albums on DGC before being released from his contract in 2008, and has found success since then releasing albums on fellow major label Capitol (who had previously lost the bidding war for him), most notably the 2014 release Morning Phase, which saw Beck finally winning an Album of the Year Grammy after having been nominated twice before.

Mercury Rev (Columbia, 1991-1996)

Signing Mercury Rev seemed almost too sensible. The group had garnered a huge cult following from their explosive shows with the Flaming Lips, who had just gotten signed to Warner Bros. (and whose guitarist Jonathan Donahue had just left to become a permanent Rev member), and their 1991 debut album Yerself is Steam had gotten rave reviews. The first problem was with the band itself: formed by students at the University of Buffalo, New York, their initial mission statement was to compose student films, and then-frontman David Baker admitted that they were just doing whatever since they figured they wouldn’t get media attention. Yerself is Steam originated in their times making hypothetical compositions for student films, giving them a spacious, cinematic feel. The music was a psychedelic collage of harsh, overpowering shoegaze guitars clashing against more melodic elements like dreamy acoustic hooks, woodwind instruments and wordless acapella backing vocals, all coupled with lyrics heavy on wordplay and surreal imagery and vocals that ranged from distant mumbled croons to intentionally silly sing-speaking.
But none of that stopped Columbia from signing them in late 1992 and reissuing Yerself is Steam shortly after, where it found an even wider audience and got similarly ecstatic reviews from larger sources like Rolling Stone and Spin. Once again, the main problem with their signing was the band themselves: getting the media attention they had never planned on didn’t dampen the band’s spirits at all, and if anything they were beginning to get more experimental. This willful experimentation also led to the beginning of the end of the group’s first lineup; while frontman David Baker wanted to keep up the band’s pre-established noisier sound, every other member was looking to implement softer elements from jazz and 60s lounge music.
Mercury Rev’s second album, Boces, greeted the world with a cover featuring a blow-up doll and a lone music video (“Something for Joey”) featuring lots of sexual imagery, censored nudity and an appearance from Ron Jeremy. The album itself is a heavier beast than the one before it, showing the band at its most creative and uncompromising, featuring prominently harsher sounds alongside integration of brass instruments, and song structures that were much more experimental and jazz-influenced. All of this led to an album that was infinitely a harder sell despite receiving similarly positive reviews.The band saw a chance to reach an even wider audience when the album’s tour crossed over into a few performances in Colorado for Lollapalooza 1993… where they were forced off the stage by the mayor of Denver for being too loud. Despite their best albums the album was just too unusual to be a commercial hit, and things were looking less than great for the band, or at least for their time being promoted by a major.
Then frontman David Baker quit, in one of the few instances where this is actually a good thing. While he remained on good terms with the band, he could tell he was the only member who wanted to keep playing their pre-established brand of psychedelic noise surrealism, and he figured it was better to let the rest of the group do what they wanted. Jonathan Donahue took up frontman duties, and the band was moved to Columbia’s more alternative-focused sub-label Work Recordings, who released 1995’s See You on the Other Side. While the album definitely feels a bit like the band trying to find a new voice, it marks a noticeable shift towards a more lush and orchestral sound, with the noise elements being much more understated. Despite the band’s continued positive reception, the album once again failed to sell, leading the band to leave Columbia altogether and take a break so individual members could focus on their own problems and rebuild their relationships.
This all proved to be for the best, as the band signed to Virgin Records offshoot V2 in 1998, who were seemingly eager to fund their musical endeavors. Inspired by the band’s desire to rekindle their relationships and potentially go out on a high note, the band completely reimagined their sound, replacing the distorted guitars of previous releases with lush orchestral instrumentation. The result was 1998’s Deserter’s Songs, a lush collection of highly harmonious and earnest orchestral indie-pop tunes that netted the band their most positive reception yet and first appearances on music charts, with three of the singles reaching the UK Top 40. This newfound attention revived the band’s interest in making music and helped establish a friendly relationship with V2, who the band stayed with until the label faced restructuring in 2007.

Butthole Surfers (Capitol, 1992-1998)

As strange as it might sound, the Butthole Surfers did have the potential to reach mass audiences, even with a name like that. Or perhaps because of the name - while the Surfers were obviously known for their music, an unabashedly drug-fueled slab of noisy psychedelic rock, distorted pitch-shifted vocals and a crude pitch-black sense of humor, with occasional delves into more experimental sounds like tape manipulation or demented country tunes, the spectacle of their live shows was what flung them into the spotlight. Shows commonly featured projected footage of surgeries and live nude dancers alongside the deranged antics of the band, who were wont to lighting instruments on fire and removing clothing.
Their biggest chance of breaking into the mainstream up to that point came in 1991, when they played at the first ever Lollapalooza show… and in Surfers fashion, frontman Gibby Haynes “sang” through a megaphone and fired a shotgun in the air on-stage. This sudden thrust into awareness, combined with the Surfers being in label limbo (their previous label Rough Trade USA filed for bankruptcy shortly before the show), Hayne’s recent appearance as lead vocalist on Ministry’s metal hit “Jesus Built My Hotrod”, and the fact that some guy named Kurt Cobain was a self-admitted huge fan, made it sound only a little bit insane when the Surfers signed with Capitol in 1992.The first order of business was to reissue their most recent album Piouhgd; the release had gone out of print almost immediately due to their previous label’s closure, and Capitol deliberately bought the rights to sway the Surfers away from other labels.
While it had a jokey cover of Donovan’s “The Hurdy Gurdy Man” that got a good bit of MTV airplay, the rest of the album was radio poison in one way or another. Piouhgd featured cheesy organs, drum machines and MIDI brass instruments throughout, alongside goofy vocals sung in exaggerated twangs or falsettos, in a time when the radio was beginning to be overrun by crunchy guitars, punchy drum beats and angsty/apathetic singers. The songs themselves included multiple variations of the same deranged country song, a Jesus and Mary Chain parody about domestic abuse, a 7-minute song in which at least 4 were spent screaming “GARRY SHANDLING!” repeatedly, and an equal-length industrial slab of noise for a closing track.
For what it’s worth, though, the Surfers quickly adapted to their surroundings, or at least did the best they could. 1993’s Independent Worm Saloon, featuring production by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame, saw the band undergo a transformation in sound. While they still kept their morbid sense of humor and some of their aggression, the album saw them going in a more alternative metal-based direction, making them much more radio-friendly and resulting in an album where the bizarre experiments were the minority rather than the norm. 1996’s Electriclarryland found the band at their peak of popularity: having integrated more electronic elements into their sound, they scored a #1 hit with the psychedelic rap-rock Beck parody “Pepper”. However, the album itself arguably found the band becoming less commercial despite their move away from noisier textures, with the album again being overtaken by more experimental pieces, only filtered through a poppier production sound (supplied by the group’s guitarist Paul Leary, who also produced Sublime’s self-titled album the same year).
Having finally had a hit on their hands, “Pepper” served as the beginning of the end, as now the Surfers had something they hadn’t had before: expectations. 1998’s After the Astronaut saw the band fully integrate electronic and hip-hop elements in their sound, with the consequence being they were way more comfortable with that sound and began creating stranger pieces with it. The album was outright rejected by the label for not having any radio hits, leading the Surfers to leave the label and the album to go unreleased (but not before promotional cassettes were produced for reviewers and promptly bootlegged by fans). While a newer recording of the album with contributions from artists such as Kid Rock would end up being released as Weird Revolution (on the Disney-owned Hollywood Records, strangely enough) in 2001, the dispute with Capitol seems to have turned the Surfers off recording new content, as most of their work since then has been as a touring legacy act. While the Surfers did find success in their years signed to a major label, their time spent there has become symbolic of where the music industry was at the time, with the underground music boom leading to majors trying their best to present artists that often refused to be presentable.
(Update 12/3/25: Paul Leary just confirmed After the Astronaut is getting an official release in 2026!!!)