For me its the Doors Soft Parade. It features this ‘tribute’ to Otis Redding…
One of the weirdist songs ever.
Yet it also has The Soft Parade which I love.
What are other examples?
Weezer’s Red Album is pretty bad. The only viable tracks are “Troublemaker” and “Variations on a Shaker Hymn” and they aren’t that great.
The Bonzo Dog Band’s Let’s Make Up and Be Friendly was a very disappointment. It was a contractual obligation album and the madness that characterized the group was badly muted into mild humor that never was more than mildly amusing.
Re The Soft Parade: the Doors were always a very erratic group, combining great songs with undistinguished filler in all of their albums. The title track is one of their best, though.
Spirit followed their masterpiece 12 Dreams of Doctor Sardonicus with “Feedback.” It was the group in name only: three of the five members (and principal songwriters) had left. The result was vastly disappointing.
Made In Heaven by Queen. I feel bad not liking it because of the circumstances behind it but it’s just bad.
For the Alan Parsons Project, I come up with a tie, between Eve and Stereotomy.
They rarely had dud albums. Some albums I’d listen to every single track over and over again. A few had invidual tracks I didn’t care for very much.
In the case of Eve, after the first couple of listens I’d go back and play “Lucifer” (which is a phenomenally good track) and leave it at that. There’s really nothing else on the album that merits more than two listens.
Stereotomy was another letdown, with the only track I cared about from pretty early on being “In the Real World”
Man I like the title track. Thats what is so great about art, we can love such different things.
True.
I’ll go with The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. When I was ripping all my Beatles CDs to mp3s, “Hey Bulldog” was the only track to make the cut. The George Martin score stuff on Side 2 is fine, once. Of the 6 Beatles songs on Side 1, “Bulldog” is a classic, “All Together Now” is a cute throwaway, neither George song is all that great, and the other 2 songs are repeats from other, better albums.
Foo Fighters One By One - Dave Grohl has apologized for it, calling it “4 good songs, and a bunch of stuff we’ve never felt like playing live.”
I think I’ve listened to Van Halen’s Balance all the way through only once. I love all of the Roth-era albums, even Diver Down, but Balance was just a tired slog.
Richard Thompson has been around long enough and put out so much outstanding material that he’s earned the right to a dud or two. “Front Parlour Ballads” was an entire album of acoustic ballads, and boy does it get tedious after the first few tracks.
Love Neil Young but the album “Everybody’s Rocking” with the Shocking Pinks was a low point. Although I am Kinda Fonda Wanda.
Yeah, mostly songs that didn’t make the cut on Sgt. Pepper, but still better than sides 3 and 4 of the White Album. Creatively, The Beatles should have been more ruthless about abandoning songs in the second half of their career, but even a shitty Beatles song was worth millions in record sales.
If The Doors after Morrison died counts, surely ‘Other Voices” would win hands-down, would it not? I bought the album used out of curiousity and I don’t think I was able to even listen to it once all the way through.
Naked by the Talking Heads. It signaled a move away from everything that made the band great.
This is a tough question since I’ve just stopped listening to new albums by many of my favorite artists. I probably haven’t listened to a new Stones album in 30 years, but I’m pretty confident they’re all worse then everything up to Exile on Main Street.
Basically, the odds are at least 3 in 4 the tread will be people listing their favorite art + said artist’s last studio recording.
Wow, just goes to show how subjective music is- I really like that that album and think of it as a prime example of ‘going out on a high note’, a late-period album by a band that still maintained a high level of quality. What exactly about it was a move away from everything that made the band great, in your opinion?
I think that Other Voices is a pretty good album overall, with several songs that are up there with the rest of their work. A drop-off, certainly, but still respectable.
Full Circle is far worse.
Hmm, maybe i’ll give it a fresh listen, then.
And Then There Were Three by Genesis. It’s definitely a band trying to figure things out. Also, the production sounds like a sub sandwich with everything on it, just mush where you can’t really hear anything. All midrange, no bass and no treble.
I’m excluding From Genesis to Revelation and Calling All Stations from the Genesis canon.
I still like (tolerate) two songs from OV and three from FC. But the rejects from FC are indeed the worst of the bunch by far.