Pleasant Dreams by The Ramones

Pleasant Dreams, the Ramones' sixth album, came out on Sire on July 20, 1981, and the story behind it is anything but pleasant. The band wanted Steve Lillywhite; the label, chasing a bigger audience, handed the job to Graham Gouldman instead. Inside the group things were worse: Joey Ramone and Johnny Ramone were at odds, over Johnny's relationship with Joey's girlfriend and over where the music should go, Johnny pulling toward hard rock and Joey toward pop.

You can hear the tug-of-war. With Joey singing, Johnny on guitar, Dee Dee on bass and Marky on drums, the buzzsaw gets buffed to a shine, and "We Want the Airwaves", "She's a Sensation" and "Come On Now" wander well away from straight-ahead punk. It's the first Ramones album with no covers and no band photo on the front. It stalled at number 58 on the Billboard 200 and split the critics.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.