The Emotional Rescue album by The Rolling Stones has one good song on it, but that one song is probably my favorite song of theirs, period.
The one good song is She’s So Cold.
I hate to admit it… BUT, Jay Ferguson album “Real Life Ain’t this way” for the song “Shakedown Cruise”
“Touch of Grey” from The Grateful Dead album In the Dark
I no longer own any albums, but I bought the album Declaration by the Alarm for the song “Sixty-Eight Guns”. To my dismay the album version has an awful middle section not on the radio version which essentially made the song unlistenable for me.
On Love and Rockets! album Earth, Sun, Moon, I only really like “No New Tale to Tell.”
The Sugarloaf album. I expected more songs like Green Eyed Lady
Blondie’s album Parallel Lines. I had heard and liked Heart of Glass on the radio. This was the first time I realized music was shifting away from what I liked. Punk wasn’t my jam. I do like some of the bands hits like Call Me. But I would never again buy a Blondie album.
I’m sure I have a few that I only like one song, but I also have a few LPs I’ve picked up over the years that I have never actually listened to…at all.
Most prominent is “The Crazy World of Arthur Brown,” released on Pete Townshend’s Track Records label in 1968. It contains Brown’s megahit “Fire,” which I have on a 45 rpm single. I found the album in the dollar bin at Woolworth’s one day in 1970 or 71, bought it and for some reason, have never gotten around to playing it. I come across it occasionally, and briefly consider throwing it on the turntable. And then I think, “Nah. Not today.”
Never heard “Fire?” Look it up. It was quite outrageous in its day. I still can’t believe it got played on Top 40 radio.
There were definitely tons of bands in the 1970s and 1980s where the two songs you heard on the radio were great, and the rest was just filler, often so boring, one couldn’t figure out how they even remembered how to play the song. R.E.M.'s “Reveal”, from 2001, has one good song, “Imitation of Life”, and then the rest is filler, at least from my perspective. Many people think it’s their greatest album.
OP, did you happen to catch this recent video, and it inspired your question? (Look at the comments; most of the people who say they own(ed) the album said they never listened to the rest of it.) Trigger alert: He lights up weed a couple of times during the video.
He’s a composer and professor of classical and sacred music who evaluates mostly progressive and metal songs.
It’s got “The Lifting” as well – I don’t think R.E.M. ever had a bad track 1 on an album [edit: except “Discoverer”] – but that’s definitely not in my top 13 studio LPs of theirs.
My contribution is Remy Zero’s Villa Elaine. They’re probably best know for “Save Me,” the theme to Smallville, but it’s not on here. Instead, it has “Prophecy,” which got into the 20s on the modern rock charts back in 1998. It’s worthy of a listen if you think you’d like it. Mr. Showbiz, one of Paul Allen’s websites that got bought by ABC/Disney (Satchel Sports, now ESPN.com, being another), gave the album a glowing review and I trusted the reviewer enough to buy it. Oops!
Heavy Weather by Weather Report has “Birdland” and that’s about it. I wouldn’t dare say the other songs suck, it’s just not my style of jazz.
I’d spent my Wonder Years meticulously making mixtapes. I was so glad when iTunes came along and I could buy albums (or I’d rip CDs that I owned) and… burn “Best Of” CDs that were just the songs I liked.
I loved that I could just buy “White Bird” and construct a disk of “Bay Area Hippie Tunage”.
.
Or the opposite of the OP (“Albums on which you like all but 1 song”)…
Back in the vinyl days I was with a bunch of friends and said “I wish I could cut a groove that’d skip through the one song I don’t like on an LP…”
And three guys, in unison with no premeditation, said: “Like Motorcycle Mama!” (the one uninspired rocker on Neil Young’s rootsy “Comes a Time” album).
If the artist’s best song is also their most atypical, yes.
Such as Grand Funk Railroad’s “I’m Your Captain”/“Closer to Home”. Amazon traditionally hasn’t allowed you buy the MP3 for a cut longer than ~10 minutes (why they couldn’t charge you double is a total mystery), and it clocks in @ 9:59 natch, so had to spring for their greatest hits package. After I ripped it I left it casually lying around the apartment and my roommate noticed it and asked for it, and I simply waved at him without looking up.
Not sure if single songs bought off of such services count for the purposes of this thread, or I would have quite a few more.
My first album I bought was Himself by Gilbert O’Sullivan. It was because Alone Again Natually was my favorite song at the time. And I didn’t like the rest of the album. And learned that you didn’t buy an album because you like a song.
American Pie (Don McLean).
I remember when I got the tape in high school and was so excited to listen to more magical tunes like American Pie…and I found utter dreck. Vincent isn’t too bad, but nowhere near the title song.
I wouldn’t call the rest of the album “dreck” exactly, but you’re entitled to your opinion. It’s just that “American Pie” was a really a-typical song for him. It wasn’t like anything else he ever recorded, yet it’s just about the only song people remember him for.
I have several of Don McLean’s albums, including “American Pie.” He was a talented singer/songwriter, but most of his output was more like “Vincent” than “American Pie.”
You won’t get any argument from me–it is very good music, just not my kind of music, and that’s the spirit of this thread.
When I posted this, I was curious about the background behind American Pie and started reading articles (should be doing work, I know…) and found two interesting facts:
- Apparently the Straight Dope was one of the rare places where Don McLean tipped his hand a tiny bit about the meaning. It’s rare to hear about a Chicago Reader article being quoted.
- The backing tracks were done in almost one take; the vocals were spliced together from 24 different takes.
Regarding that smokin’ band, Ed Freeman, the producer, said:
“I wanted to capture the sound of a band that was really cooking, and for that I made a deliberate choice to not use a bunch of studio musicians who could act like a metronome and turn on like a faucet, without any feel. Instead, the people we used were good musicians but ones with not a whole lot of studio experience who, instead of doing a series of overdubs, would play together and provide us with an organic performance.”
…
"Had we rehearsed the song with seasoned studio players, we would have gotten about three takes out of them before they fell asleep. They wouldn’t have needed to play it a hundred times. However, to get Don integrated into the band we did need to do that.
And regarding Don McLean’s vocals:
"My nickname at the time was Slash, because I wanted so many cuts — I was a monster when it came to editing tape. Now, when I listen to ‘American Pie’, I know where all of the vocal edits are, but there’s only one where I actually smell a rat. One word is made up of three syllables and they come from three different takes. That’s how picky I was about it, and I have to say that I was helped immeasurably in that regard by Tom Flye.”
I didn’t find Re·ac·tor great, but I didn’t mind it and did listen to it. Now the next album fits this thread to a T: Trans. One listening was all the was required for me to know there was only one song I liked. I should go back and relisten to see if there is anything beyond Mr. Soul that I like.
I also once bought a Foghat CD just so I could play “Slow Ride.” I don’t remember if I ever even bothered listening to any of the other songs.
My roommate was giving away some CDs, and I claimed Nelson’s After the Rain. I only ever liked the title track.
Wow! Thanks for that great link! Creating what has become a Pop classic was far more complex than I ever would have imagined. Don McLean was a folkie at heart, a guy with a guitar. and “American Pie” was nothing like that. I’ve always wondered how that came about.
That site has a lot of stories about other songs that I will probably spend hours and hours reading. Thanks again for pointing me to it!