The critics seem to like every album that Fiona Apple has released.
Strangely, I’m completely disengaged by all of her albums except the first one - Tidal - which is amazing on many levels and which I could listen to on repeat forever.
Ninjaed yet again! You people are psychic.
Wakeman obviously had some (more than) decent tunes floating around and put them all in this album. He struggled to get anywhere that level again.
This is super tough…despite having like a zillion CDs, I’m hard-pressed to think of one. Maybe…Joe Jackson’s Blaze of Glory. I love that album but don’t feel the need to pick up any of his other work.
Far easier would be the reverse proposition, the one totally crap album by an otherwise solid act. That one’s a snap: Hot Space by Queen.
They have more than one good album, but they also have experienced a decline and went through a period of “no good albums”.
They did not experience talent-decay like Metallica, who released back-to-back-to-back-to-back amazing albums and now can only muster a good song here or there.
U2 did decline, though. I liked their two most recent albums a lot more, but after Achtung Baby, it was a long time before they did a whole lot of great stuff.
I sorta disagree. I thought Zooropa was just as good as, and of a piece with, Achtung Baby. Pop was a bit of a bungle, trying way too hard to go in on then-current clattery club music (Bowie made a weak-ish album, Earthling, for the same reasons that same year). All That You Can’t Leave Behind sounded like a conscious retrenchment, getting back to the Joshua-era “big music” sound. Two albums later is when it totally fell apart for me. The minute Bono fired up his iPad, thought ponderously for a moment, then tapped out the lyric “Every generation gets a chance to change the world…” he lost me for good.
Love love love that album. I didn’t realize there was a film (Heart Like a Hand Grenade) about the making of it. Free on crackle…
I adore Tori Amos’s “Little Earthquakes,” but I can’t seem to get into anything else of hers. Eventually I gave up trying.
While George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass is a terrific album, I find the rest of his work hit or miss. Much like Rick Wakeman, he had a bunch of songs backlogged for the album, but had trouble coming up with new songs of that level.
Were many of those potential Beatles songs that he put on a solo album? I presume that is what you mean and it is always what I suspected.
I love The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd. Have probably played it 300 times.
It’s the only Pink Floyd album I own. I can’t stand any of the dozen or so Pink Floyd songs that are played all the time on the radio, which means I would probably hate whatever albums those songs are on, e.g. DSotM. (Though I must admit, I haven’t heard A Saucerful of Secrets.)
Same here. It’s still one of the best albums I’ve ever listened to.
And when it was nearly 3 years before Living in the Material World came out, I figured he had to have put together some great music over that much time. I was so ready to love that album, and it was such a disappointment. And since then, a good song here and there, and of course the Wilburys. But still not much compared to ATMP.
Here’s one: Dr. John’s Goin’ Back to New Orleans. My wife and I both love this album, but we’ve never really been able to get that much into the rest of his stuff.
Most were written before the Beatles broke up and a few were proposed for Let it Be and were rejected. The Wikipedia page covers their origin.
Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” really resonated with me. The movie enhanced that experience with its visual depiction of mental breakdown. At the time, I was struggling with my first panic attacks, and the whole album and movie spoke to me deeply. Still does.
The rest of Pink Floyd’s work? Meh.
Queens of the Stone Age’s Lullabies to Paralyze is one of my favorite albums by anyone. The rest of their oeuvre is fine but just doesn’t grab me in the same way.
Head Hands & Feet had a terrific album, “Old Soldiers Never Die”, with excellent songs and production throughout. Based on that, I searched long and hard for their other two albums which never seemed to be available through the usual outlets, and ultimately scored both off eBay. I needn’t have bothered - both are forgettable rock and country-rock-blues.
For me, it’s “Hunky Dory”. There are other Bowie songs here and there that I like, but otherwise it’s meh.
Cindi Lauper debut She’s So Unusual is a wonderfully quirky and inspired album. Only six tracks and they are all good. Girls Wanna Have Fun,She Bop,Time After Time
I bought and threw out several that came afterwards.
True Colors is the 2nd album and that’s really the only great song.
I have her hits album 12 Deadly Cyns on my phone. It’s mostly the first album and a few songs from her others.
There’s blood in my mouth 'cause I’ve been biting my tongue all week – or at least the part of the week that’s come after I read this thread and all the wrong opinions therein.
My opinions, in decreasing order of correctness:
Boston, Boston
Silent Alarm, Bloc Party
Z, My Morning Jacket
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, PJ Harvey
Laurie Anderson’s Mr Heartbreak. I’ve played it often over the years and still love it start to finish, it’s brilliant. Nothing else of hers has hooked me though.
I had been creating a timelines playlist for Pearl Jam and have given up. I realized their first two albums were awesome and after that their entire collection has 2 good songs.
That’s almost exactly how I feel about Foo Fighters. Love, love, love the first two albums (saw them on their debut tour up close in a small hall), tried hard to convince myself I liked the third album, and gave up on the fourth album. There’s a few decent radio hits in the subsequent two decades, and Dave Grohl seems like a really nice guy, but I just can’t get into anything beyond their first two LPs. I admit Hail Satin was pretty funny, but the joke wore out pretty quickly.