I’d have to pick the double whammy of “Aumgn” and “Peking O” on Can’s classic Tago Mago. The album’s great up until then, and then it has two freeform noise experiments, seventeen(!) and eleven(!) minutes long respectively. If you’ve got the album on vinyl - and, let’s face it, who hasn’t? - it means that poor old “Bring me Coffee or Tea” is trapped at the end of the second disc. Which is a shame, 'cause it’s good.
In fact “Tago Mago” is a great example of a good double album that could have been slimmed down to a great single album by just getting rid of the second disc.
Also, “Within You Without You”, slap-bang at the start of side two of Sgt Pepper. Even Indian people don’t listen to Indian classic music, why would they listen to a version of Indian classical music by George Harrison, and why should we? Then or now?
You could play a game whereby you pick any track from Sgt Pepper and pick that as the weak link. Doesn’t matter which one, you can find a way to damn it. “When I’m 64” is just Paul McCartney being rubbish, same with “She’s Leaving Home”. And all the other McCartney tracks. It’s a McCartney-dominated album which is why it sucks. “With a Little Help from my Friends” is a solid song that needed Joe Cocker to make it come alive. “Mr Kite” and “Good Morning” are just a waste of Lennon’s talent. He must have been infected with Paul McCartney’s germs. “Day in the Life” has that rubbish McCartney bit in the middle. Oh how I hate him and his silly love songs. The two titles tracks aren’t properly-developed songs. “Lucy” is like the inferior twin of “Strawberry Fields”. You know, all those people who liked the album were dead wrong.
I admit that I’m being Devil’s advocate. You’d have to hate the world and the sunshine to really dislike Sgt Pepper. It’s alive. But Paul should really have let Lennon have more say in it - he had more of an edge, more restraint on Revolver and Beatles, perhaps the drugs made him too nice.
John Mellencamp’s 1987 release *The Lonesome Jubilee * is a rather haunting slice of blue-collar Midwestern life. Some of the tracks have a socio-political bent, others are simple tales of small-town disenchantment, and they all combine into a powerful and thought-provoking whole.
Until you get to “Hotdogs and Hamburgers,” a clumsy, obvious screed about the white man’s treatment of Native Americans that actually borders on reverse racism. It’s the second-last track on the album, so if you’ve listened to the whole thing all the way through, this turd manages to tear apart the rich tapestry that’s been woven up to that point. It’s a shame.
I had the idea, when CDs first came out, that it’d be great if the user could somehow program their player to recognize a disk, and then play a single track, or the whole disk in a particular order, or skip a track. So, I’d explain, every time you put in your favorite CD, it’d skip that one song that ruins it.
More than one friend said “You mean like Motorcycle Mama”?
They’d all thought of Neil Young’s Comes a Time album, that’s all quiet and deep and acoustic except for one raucous track.
OP, if you’re going to explain what an album is, could you also please explain what a track is? I think the term refers to tracking in a studio recording where each instrument and vocal is recorded seperately, as seperate tracks, and then put together for one track (the song).
Or does track refer to the physical grooves on a record?
My contribution, now, will be from Achtung Baby by U2, one of the greatest (perhaps the greatest) albums of time, even though I actually don’t care for U2 overall. But the 2nd to last song on the album, “Acrobat,” is just noise. Luckily, I can skip that track, but it’s the only song on the album that requires a skip.
It’s the most beautiful song on the album. Much better than Sweet Child O’ Mine which is great but in a way nothing but a corny love song.
But speaking of Gn’R… My world at the end of Use Your Illusion 2.
There’s totally no need for that tagged on piece of rubbish.
It makes listening to Revolution 9 fun. (I admit, there are times when I like listening to those random sounds, especially after I’ve read Helter Skelter)
There is only one groove on each side of a record.
I thought track was the universally accepted word for song when describing the contents of a CD, LP, or whatever.
I wouldn’t call it a “song.” I don’t mind it if it’s playing in my audio background, but can’t stand trying to actually listen to it. Self indulgent audio collage filler.
My candidate for the Turd In The Punchbowl Award is Greg Lake’s sappy/WTF “Still You Turn Me On”; deleting it makes ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery my lifetime favorite album.
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Four sticks grew on me until it became one of the songs I most enjoyed on that album. I know it isn’t widely known/played, but I know at least some other people who share my liking for it.
Just because a record has a groove don’t make it in the groove.
Which reminds me: I nominate “Black Man” (or at least the shouted history lesson part) from Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life.
However, some of y’all’s suggestions are just wrong. For example:
I think the song works wonderfully as the conclusion to Side 1, which is where I’m used to hearing it, since I first got Arthur on a cassette that (I later learned) had a different track ordering than on the official LP/CD release, an order that IMHO worked much better musically.
If any tracks mess up that album (not that I’m saying they do!), it’s “Australia,” not because it’s a bad song but because it goes on too long compared to the rest of the album. A similar thing might be said about “Last of the Steam Powered Trains” on the otherwise concise Village Green Preservation Society.
For a couple of weeks, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols was a perfect album. Then they had to go and add Submission to the second pressing, and all pressings after that. Terrible, awful, fucking horrible song…