Both of these are great examples that I had thought of too. In fact, “Ebony and Ivory” is a two-fer, demonstrating that two musical geniuses are capable of churning out sappy schlock.
Yeah, it seems we are naming artists that were ASTOUNDING and then put out some pedestrian commercial stuff. Not the WORST to happen.
Indeed.
Yeah, it’s possible this:p isn’t exactly Pet Sounds-level quality. And I’m not talkng about production values, there, either.
Filmmaker John Frankenheimer went from Manchurian Candidate to Prophecy.
Hal Ashby gave us The Last Detail and Being There, but also 8 Milliion Ways to Die.
I see a VAST gulf between the Stones’ classic “Rocks Off” and “She’s My Little Rock’n Roll”.
Ok, maybe I was a little harsh when I nominated Phil Collins and Steve Howe, then.
But I stand what I said about Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman.
One of my favorite novels is All The Bells On Earth by James P. Blaylock. The Elfin Ship is admirable as well. But most of his other stuff is unreadable, IMHO, especially The Narbondo Series.
Thomas Harris wrote the classic The Silence of the Lambs and Cara Mora, one of the worst ‘thrillers’ ever published. I’m not even sure it qualifies as a novel.
I own a masterpiece bracelet by a Navajo silversmith who made his daily living churning out tourist schlock because that’s what sold. Of better-known folks, I’ll nominate Bob Dylan, who won his Nobel because “The ghost electricity howls in the bones of her face” but dipped to “All the wild horses in the sun” and “You’ve gotta serve somebody.”
But he should have known better at age 60 when he did The Green Berets.
Damn you!
For thems what didn’t recognize it, Visions of Johanna is the song what won Bob his prize. Or was it Desolation Row? Or just Highway 61 and Blonde on Blonde to make it easy.
I’m not the world’s biggest Billy Joel fan, but I have to admit that he was quite good in his style of pop songwriting – perhaps one of the best. Then there was his prog-rock band Attila. I know, I know – it’s an easy one to piss on (and perhaps a bit unfairly, but I’m not one to judge as I dislike 95% of prog rock), but it often infamously comes up in discussions of “worst rock album ever made.” So, quite literally, he comes up in discussions of both best and worst albums of all time. Then again, you also have bands like the Shaggs whose only studio album can literally be on both someone’s best albums ever list and worst albums ever list. (The vast majority of people would put it on the latter list; I’d put it somewhere in between. It’s technically terrible, but it is interesting.)
Nitpick: All The Tired Horses. But I knew what you meant. “Wiggle Wiggle” is probably even worse.
Hey, I LIKE “A Boy Named Sue.”
So much so that I went and named my son…
Pressing on the walls of “any medium”, I’m going to nominate Richard Garfield: the game designer who created the wildly successful Magic: the Gathering collectible card game in the early 90s which laid the foundation for the collectible card game (CCG) genre and is still played by an estimated 20,000,000 people. It’s the most successful CCG of all time and still going strong both in physical paper card form and through multiple digital/online versions.
A few years ago, he was hired on by computer game company Valve to design a game for their video game platform. He created the digital card game Artifact, which was widely panned and went from 60,000 concurrent online players at launch to less than 100 players eight months later. A Valve rep confirmed its failure, saying “Artifact represents the largest discrepancy between our expectations for how one of our games would be received and the actual outcome”. Some of its issues (card costs) were out of Garfield’s hands but it was also considered difficult to learn, not much fun to play and boring to watch.
Obviously a lot of video games (and CCGs) fail but the collapse of Artifact will be one for the books, given its expectations and hype.
I was going to go with Roger Waters, but then I remembered Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ contributions to music. On the one hand he did Constipation Blues (pure brilliance), but on the other he did… everything else he ever did (apart from maybe I Put a Spell on You, a cover to which I believe I’ve heard making the rounds recently).
Eric Clapton’s *Layla *Unplugged!
Jefferson Airplane as Jefferson Starship - We Built This City
A lot of Asian artists have done some really horrible movies even later in their career, especially to break into the Western market.
Chow Yun Fat - The Replacement Killers
John Woo - Face off
Jeon Ji Hyun as Gianna Jun - Blood: The Last Vampire. Whyyyyyy Ji Hyun! Thankfully she went back to Korea and did *The Thieves *there!
Oh, lord.
Actually, I was expecting this.
Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is arguably one of the most important works in the Western canon. With its savage but complex polyrhythms and primitive, pungent yet evocative dissonances, it altered the course of Classical Music and opened the doors of a completely new world. That piece has a place on any serious top 10 of the most important Classical works of all time, full stop.
But apart from that…
Well, he wrote half a dozen works that range from very good (Symphony for Wind Instruments, Symphony of Psalms, Petrouchka) to near-masterpiece (The Firebird, The Song of the Nightingale, Les Noces).
However, for the remaining 40 years of his career, he produced either cardboard, facile and immediately forgettable Neo-Classical drivel or, belatedly, dull dodecaphonic works. Minimal effort, zero staying power, but it’s got “Stravinsky” written on it, so it must be good, right ?
His entire output from those decades feels like a cynical cash-grab.
What about George Clooney?
He was absolutely amazing in Up in the Air and O Brother Where Art Thou while also bringing us Return to Horror High and Return of the Killer Tomatoes.
I really think you don’t understand the question.
Considering his field includes folks like Ed Wood, he has never made anything remotely close to the worst.