Back for very good: These are the 50 best comeback albums

Ten years after “Wrecking Ball,” Miley Cyrus dominated the charts again. Seven years after their last album, Metallica hit us with something again. Everything But The Girl took 24 years to make their comeback. It was six years with Fever Ray – “only”, although that is, for example, two years more than the entire (seven) recording career of Creedence Clearwater Revival. We’re taking this as an opportunity to choose the 50 best comeback albums. Conditions of participation: first record after split or at least ten years apart from its predecessor.

Can
RITE TIME
1989

The innovative sounds that Can had already cultivated in the seventies were only really properly appreciated in this country in the course of the eighties, when ethno sounds, cyclical rhythms and electronic experiments found their way into pop. In this respect, RITE TIME came at just the right time. At least in theory. Released ten years after their last work to date, expectations were extremely high, especially since even the almost legendary original singer Malcolm Mooney, who left in 1970, was back on board. RITE TIME is a consistently solid album worth listening to, but it doesn’t add any absolutely essential tracks to the band’s oeuvre. Had it been released in the mid-80s it might have had more impact, but by 1989 techno was already knocking on house’s door. The caravan had moved on. (Uwe Schleifenbaum)

television
TELEVISION
1992

With MARQUEE MOON, Television released an album in 1977 that defined punk and at the same time overcame it. Another no less outstanding record the following year, then it was over. Tom Verlaine’s egocentrism, Richard Llyod’s drug-fueled jealousy: the reasons for the split were little different from those of other groups. It took thirteen long years to close the wounds. Their guitars have been competing again since 1992, even on stage at the Glastonbury Festival in the summer. Ten songs remain from the brief reunion. Her arrangements have gained further maturity and sophistication, some of them rooted in Verlaine’s passion for jazz. This record seems more polished and – that’s the downside – also tamer than its two predecessors. Highlighted are “18freu80 Or So”, “No Glamor For Willi” and “Mars”. (Martin Student)

The doctors
THE BEST IN HUMAN DESIGN
1993

Two flopped interim “careers” with King Køng and Depp Jones, as well as the absolute urge to counter the right-wing extremist violent excesses in the now reunified Germany, brought Bela B and Farin Urlaub back together after five years of separation. The result is her best album with her best single, “Cry for Love.” The record ended with a burped “Yes!”, but The doctors were no longer children’s heads. With “Close your eyes” there was nothing to laugh about, with “Friedenspanzer” there was, but there was also a lot to think about. The sound had also changed: the former metal skeptic Urlaub discovered hard tones for himself and the rock band parodists with clear guitars had become a rock band with dirty guitars. Outstanding: the folk music parody “When it becomes evening”, in which the Wildecker Herzbuben who were asked didn’t want to take part. (Stephan Rehm Rozanes)

Scott Walker
TILT
1995

When TILT was released a few years before the millennium, Scott Walker had already made his first disturbing comeback with CLIMATE OF HUNTER (1984) – with few blues and rock concessions to a traditional audience. Walker, once a teenage idol and radiant baritone of the Beat era, ventured into ambient areas with his artificial howl, bordered by delicately creaking jazz basses. The singer was looking for an outpost and still wanted to be heard. TILT now opened up a complete sound space for self-imposed exile and Walker’s art of contradiction, in which esotericism, industrial music and Gothic opera fought for their spheres of influence. Hard-to-sort music that was intended to get in the mood for what the radical tone sequences on BISH BOSCH (2012) manifested: Scott Walker put his personal battlefield into sound. (Frank Sawatzki)

The Verve
URBAN HYMNS
1997

After two moderately successful records, the Brit poppers with a penchant for extravagant arrangements split up in a dispute in 1995. What was intended to be singer “Mad” Richard Ashcroft’s solo debut ended up becoming the group’s third album after Ashcroft realized his songs lacked Nick McCabe’s uniquely flowing guitar and brought him back along with the rest of the band. The “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, made from a sample from a 1965 orchestral version of the Stones’ oldie “The Last Time”, became a global hit, and the subsequent ballad “The Drugs Don’t Work” saw the former underdogs reach number 1 in the UK. Ten million were supposed to sell the big city anthems and make The Verve the only band that genre god Noel Gallagher accepted alongside them. But the old wounds never healed: the band broke up again in 1999, and ten years later after a brief comeback with the bland FORTH. (Stephan Rehm Rozanes)

Blondie
NO EXIT
1999

There’s no question: NO EXIT, released 17 years after THE HUNTER, was a commercial success. The single “Maria” reached number 1 in the British charts, and the 113-show world tour, which began four months before the album release, became the epitome of a successful “we’re back” break. So far so good. But it is also a fact that NO EXIT couldn’t quite keep up with brilliant achievements like the first four Blondie albums, especially PARALLEL LINES. Terrible? No. Because firstly, the joy of seeing the band on a stage again prevailed, secondly, respectable to really good works followed, such as POLLINATOR from 2017. So NO EXIT was just the overture and Blondie’s second spring was not one of those undignified fundraising measures shortly before retirement , but actually permanent. (Uwe Schleifenbaum)