Looking back, the title “Don’t Look Back” may have been a bad look. That was the name of Boston’s second album, coming exactly two years – quite a long duration for the era – after the band’s eponymous 1976 debut record, which was, to be clear, nothing short of a rock and roll game-changer. And although “Don’t Look Back” would certainly be considered commercially successful, it holds none of the first album’s enduring classic rock cachet (while also achieving only a fraction of the prior’s massive sales). The most obvious question is why, but a clear assessment of their differences is relevant to address first. And here that is in a nutshell: there are none.

Boston’s creation was, of course, masterminded by music’s first tech bro, Tom Scholz, who began writing songs while attending MIT, where he would obtain a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. He later worked briefly for Polaroid, using his salary to build a recording studio in his home’s basement where the demo tapes for future classics like ‘More Than A Feeling,’ ‘Peace of Mind,’ and ‘Rock and Roll Band’ would all first be recorded. Scholz’s harmonized, neo-classical guitars and exquisitely layered production were two of the three pillars of the band’s genre-defining sound (the category of “arena rock” was arguably invented for them). The third were the dramatic vocals of Brad Delp, whose “golden voice” could have been trademarked for its effortless range and flawless tonality.

The hugely anticipated follow-up Boston album had every bit of that same ingenious concept. It sounds as if it could have been recorded from the same sessions as the debut, though, of course, it wasn’t. “Don’t Look Back” essentially did everything that made its predecessor so sonically astounding and historically significant…again. So the question that’s really begged here is this: what if it had come first? Or, looked at another way, what if there hadn’t been a debut album, and the first we ever heard from the band Boston were the tracks contained on “Don’t Look Back”? Bands can sometimes be denounced for diverging from an established mode and venturing off in new artistic directions that ultimately fail to find the same sweet spot. But far more often, it seems to me, they can be feverishly disparaged for the musical crime of doing more of what they’ve already established they’re especially good at.

Isn’t that basically what happened with Boston – a criticism, by the way, from which they essentially never recovered (a third album of some renown was eventually made, but did not arrive until the industry eternity of 8 more years, after which their relevance almost entirely faded). The songs on “Don’t Look Back” – like the original, just 8 in total – are objectively excellent (assuming, that is, that you were among those who made the first Boston album the best-selling debut ever at the time of its release, and helped keep it on the Billboard charts a stunning 132 weeks). And it was doomed and decried for nothing so much as being the same as something sensational. At least that’s the feeling I came away with after a recent full-length re-listening (apologies, but dare I say it was more than a feeling).

Yes, I understand wanting to experience an artist’s creative growth and all that. Sure. But also, what of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it? What I’m left firmly thinking is that if those very same recordings, that exact group of 8 songs that made up “Don’t Look Back,” had somehow arrived into the music world’s bloodstream in 1978 as their own debut, without the pre-existence of the earth-shaking Boston tunes that had come before them, they may well have been considered one of rock’s great collections. And if that is so, why should they not be appreciated and acclaimed in that way today, merely because their emergence was scoffingly, albeit accurately, deemed to be more of the same.

This wasn’t a sophomore slump, it was just too much of a good thing. And yet, unreasonably cruel judgement has never really abated. But, only 47 years later, I believe that I’ve arrived, at last, at a simple corrective solution. Let’s just amend the title of Boston’s superb follow-up album to allow it to properly stand on its own. Henceforth it can be known as “Don’t Look Back. Seriously, Don’t”.