Follow-up Album Quotes

Sometimes people stop me on the street and they say 'when are you going to make the next 'Zanaka' and it's what I really didn't want to do.

People have been asking me since I did 'Carried Me, The Worship Project,' 'When are you going to do another worship project?' And that's my favorite one.

You know, it's absolutely connected to The Mollusk in that, it's what we're writing after The Mollusk. A lot of this stuff reminds me of things on The Mollusk.

I guess coming after 'Country Grammar' and everybody thinking, 'Well maybe, that was it.' To come back with something like 'Nellyville' and to have people accept it and appreciate it the way they did, that was a great move.

Moving from a first to a second album is an incredibly transitional time for any band because you never get to make one in a vacuum like you did with your debut.

Our first album sold a million copies. Because we had such a big hit on the first album, it's always like, 'You can't top the first album.'

When I got to the second album, there was an expectation, because we'd sold nearly seven million albums on the first record, that this would do eight or nine.

There's always pressure on the second album - this one has to be the big one.

I know a lot of people feel pressure with their major label sophomore CD and having to follow up their first record real good. Well, we didn't have that pressure, because we have a real loyal fanbase, not a fanbase because we're on the radio, know what I mean?

I'd had my whole life to write my first album. I had my No. 1 and my third single out, and they go, 'Hey, guess what? We need to start recording the next one.' I'm like, 'Uh oh, I got to write another album. Well, how am I gonna write 'Should've Been a Cowboy' and 'Ain't Worth Missing' and all that again?' It took me forever to write the first one.

A lot of people give in to those pressures and let others influence the process on their second albums because they want to achieve the success they had with their first again, but they don't know how to do it.

There is a lot of pressure to top yourself... to come up with a 'Rumours II,' and that seemed like a trap.

I was afraid of the sophomore slump even before our first record came out. It was a very real fear because I'd watched so many bands I'd loved in the past not deliver. I knew it was a very real thing. I didn't know why it happens, but I'd been thinking about it a lot.

I had written or cowritten eight of the ten songs on 'Beauty and the Beat,' and I had written our biggest hit, 'We Got the Beat.' How was I going to top all of that?

The idea that I am cynical because I'm writing the books that I write is a bit like someone saying, 'What, you've done a second album? Oh, I see, cashing in on your first album, are you?' But I'm a musician! It's sort of what I do.

We really were poised to make 'Rumours 2,' and that could've been the beginning of kind of painting yourself into a corner in terms of living up to the labels that were being placed on you as a band.

I struggled with the pressure of having the successful record after the first record. Second album syndrome. I'm living proof; it's very real.

The first album didn't become successful until the second was practically written.

When I did 'Horses,' I never expected to make another album.