I nicked this idea from a YouTube video I saw (it might have been on Mazzy’s channel). I thought it’s a good way to while away some time and fritter away some bandwidth.
It’s simple - take five artists you absolutely love, and pick out an album trhat really embarrasses their catalogue – and why. I’ll get things rolling:
Pink Floyd – A Momentary Lapse Of Reason This atrocity is the biggest blot on the Floyd’s huge legacy. It should never have been released. It’s all dated 1980s production tropes, slap bass shenanigans and gated snare trickery – and that’s before we get to the songs, which are stodgy, tune-free puddings with laughable lyrics. That sound you can hear in the background? It’s Roger Waters cackling maniacally.
New Order – Waiting For The Siren’s Call Mediocre songs, terrible lyrics and singing from Bernard. Everyone else sounds anonymous. That Hooky’s last album for this once-thrilling band is this tepid turd is truly sad. Even the cover’s a dud. No indeed.
**David Bowie – TonightNever Let Me Down is usually posited as the low point in Bowie’s catalogue, but this 1984 “effort” is for me much more egregious, mostly because of the awful '80s production, Bowie’s self-parodic singing, the cod-reggae of the title track and THAT Beach Boys cover.
The Blue Nile – Peace At Last After two peerless albums, Paul Buchanan largely takes over and the result is is this bland slush, obviously aimed at the US “mature adult” market. All mystery is expunged in favour of syrupy sentiment. An absolute stinker, as Terry-Thomas would say.
Grateful Dead – Go To Heaven What WERE they thinking? If you think the cover’s bad, wait until you hear the music contained within it – you’ll feel like you’ve gone to hell.
Terrible is an interesting and very strong choice of classification. Most artists to me have a period when they are at their best to my taste, then decline and I lose interest: Led Zeppelin & Black Sabbath are two such examplss. The cause sometimes may be through line-up changes, others for less definable reasons, but that doesn’t make their output terrible, just became uninteresting.
One that was truly terrible (as well as marking the point of decline of the band beyond my interest, having loved them before that, was King Crimson’s 5th album, Earthbound - a live album, which sounded as if it had been recorded on the cheapest cassette recorder available, stuffed in someone’s pocket in the adjoining bar, with input gain wound up to overload. It was the worst album I ever made the mistake to buy.
The only other one I can think of at the moment is Pink Floyd’s Endless River, which would have been better called Endless drivel. I loved their early stuff, and loved them as they evolved, all the way through up to and including Final Cut. Momentary lack of reason was a definite fall in standard/interest, though still listenable, and Division bell not bad. But ER’s amalgamated collection of out-takes from previous albums was a dirge with no musical interest or value and a shameful airing for what was left of such a great band.
For another three I will have to spend some time contemplating…
A can’t agree here Kev. Tonight is nowhere near as bad as all that. It has Loving the Alien and Neighbourhood Threat and actually gets as much play here at Dane towers as some other more celebrated Bowie LPs. Whereas, Never Let Me Down, gets no play… at all!
Jethro Tull ‘Warchild’ is a dog IMHO, with a great track ‘Skating away…’ to redeem it. Of course post Crest of a Knave almost all JT is awful, but Warchild came out when they were still interesting.
Bruce
Incidentally I quite like about half of Blue Nile ‘Peace at Last’. ’ ‘High’ is very boring though, much poorer album for me.
You see this is the problem with what people think people say. You can search the interweb for Rick’s views on Tales of Topographic Oceans and find Rick hated it as Karen on facebook might have said.
But then you see Rick’s statement might have related to ther tour and not the album
"I didn’t understand Topographic Oceans. That’s why I hardly played on it,” Wakeman complains to Dan Wooding in his book The Caped Crusader. “It frustrated me no end and playing the whole thing on tour, I got farther and farther away from it.
I’m a big Macca fan and its hard to list this as Terrible, lets say, it sounds to me that he had 4 good songs and threw the rest in to finish it off
Stranglehold
Good Times Coming / Feel The Sun
Talk More Talk
Footprints
Only Love Remains
Press
Pretty Little Head
Move Over Busker
Angry
However Absurd
I’m going for a lie down after criticising the great man.
Slaves and Masters - Deep Purple
Locked In - Wishbone Ash
Behind the Mask - Fleetwood Mac
Born Again - Black Sabbath
Love Beach - Emerson, Lake & Palmer
it’s narrowing it down to 5 favourite artists.
good songs and threw the rest in to finish it off