One and Done........Artists You Only Like One Album By

Inspired by steevee in the U2 thread saying he only liked Achtung Baby (all the way through).

I guess there's plenty of artists who drop off after their debut but it'd be more interesting if you only like one deeper in the discography (like Achtung .....)



Post Edited (12-16-17 17:23)

Led Zeppelin-III

They were much better at appropriating British folk music than the blues, in my extremely unpopular opinion.

Paul Simon-GRACELAND

Pete Townshend-EMPTY GLASS

I'm speaking of both of them as solo artists - I value their earlier duo/group, and I even love The Who as late as The Who BY NUMBERS.

Soundgarden - Ultramega OK
Janes Addiction - First album (Its painful how much I love this album but can't get into the rest. Of course Nothing Shocking had a couple of good tunes as well but meh.)
White Zombie - Make Them Die Slowly
Metallica - Master of Puppets (I likish the two before it but this is the only one I crave to hear. Possibly the best thrash metal album, one of the least interesting genres)
I'm with Steevee on acoustic Zep. I listen to 3 and a a little of Physical Graffitti.

I agree about Palmer's CLUES and ABC's greatest hits album is the only one that comes near the quality of THE LEXICON OF LOVE.

Ah yes, the Human League. Tho my choice is "Travelogue." (Does the "Dignity of Labour" EP count? It's even better.)

steevee, I loved "The Black Album" for precisely the reasons you guessed. I never much cared for Prince. His funk was not too funky, his rock was of the hair-metal variety. I've said here before that I am to James Brown and P-Funk what most people are to Prince and Michael Jackson. And "The Black Album" is indeed like some outrageous ParliamentFunkadelic thang.

Good call on the Pretenders first, breno.



Post Edited (12-17-17 11:35)

Meat Puppets "II" - I like bits n bobs off other albums, but "II" is perfect, the only one I need.

New Order "Power Corruption and Lies" - see Meat Puppets comment. Now a comp of their previous singles/EPs would be another story, but we can't include comps, that's cheating, no?

Prince "The Black Album"

The Stranglers "Feline" - American version, with "Golden Brown," their one great work of art.

Barba Streisand "Barbra, and Other Musical Instruments" - AWFUL! But really weird, what with Moogs/electronic studio effects, and a plethora of ethnic instruments. Thrift store, 25 cents.



Post Edited (12-16-17 18:01)

Why Prince's BLACK ALBUM? I think that and PARADE are his two fumbles in a decade when he released 4 of rock (or whatever kind of music he was making)'s all-time masterpieces. But I understand that the way it sticks out in his catalogue in a way that doesn't appeal to me at all might be exactly what someone else might like.

Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town

That's the only one I can think of that falls into this category.

There are others that are more in the category of "If I only had one album by ___ to listen to, it would be ___" This doesn't mean I don't like other albums, just that there's one that stands out head and shoulders above everything else with that artist as far as I'm concerned, and I'd be OK if that's the only one I ever heard again. Examples include:

Alice Cooper / Billion Dollar Babies
Teenage Fanclub / Bandwagonesque
Human League / Dare
Kraftwerk / Trans Europe Express
Smithereens / Especially For You
Blondie / Parallel Lines
U2 / The Unforgettable Fire

DARE is the only Human League album I've heard, and I really like it, but I've also heard their 1978 Peel session, and it's pretty awesome, albeit in a synth-punk vein I'm assuming they abandoned upon signing to Virgin.

Usually, NEBRASKA is the token Springsteen album non-fans like.

Stone Temple Pilots' third album, Tiny Music, is the only one where they showed signs that they might be able to break out of the grunge rut. Before they could consolidate its success with a tour, though, Scott Weiland's bad habits caught up with him, and a court-ordered stay in rehab cost the band its momentum. By the time of their next album, they were back to churning out the same old sound.

Weezer - Pinkerton Everything else they've ever done has been delivered with a shit-eating smirk attached to it, and I despise that.

Robert Palmer - Clues; I like individual tracks from other Palmer albums, but that was his only one where the album itself was a keeper. Even the lesser songs on it are kind of essential, to throw the great ones into sharper relief. "Johnny and Mary" is pretty stellar in any context, but especially so when it starts up after "Sulky Girl."

Stone Roses - debut
Chapterhouse - Whirlpool - two examples of bands who really got lost in the woods after strong debuts

The only entire Pretenders album I have much use for is the debut.

Tempted to say Lexicon of Love by ABC, but I have a weird affection for How To Be a Zillionaire, despite the fact I can only think of two songs that I like from it.



Post Edited (12-17-17 10:37)

The Stone Roses are a tricky thing - I'm not a big fan of Second Coming, but on some level you could argue it wasn't totally their fault with lawsuits and their unwillingness to record because of that. I mean, the singles from Sally Cinnamon through the debut are pretty stellar too imo - most of the Turns Into Stone stuff.

I think it's 5 and 1/2 years after the debut and Second Coming and the magic was almost all gone by that point...... I often argue it as an "alternative history" that if they followed the debut up more quickly, you might have had a real Britpop phenomenon in the early 90s in the US (well more than you did anyway when it was '94).



Post Edited (12-17-17 11:22)

breno, does this mean you gave Blood Music another chance and still didn't dig it?

The Sundays' "Reading, Writing and Arithmetic"

Oh, how I wish their subsequent albums were as brilliant and enchanting as their debut. I wish they could have just called it a day after this one.

Quote

breno, does this mean you gave Blood Music another chance and still didn't dig it?

I've tried on several occasions to get into Blood Music. I'll listen to it and on several of the songs I'll think "Okay, yeah, I don't know why I didn't like this before" and then the dance elements start kicking in and I remember oh yeah, that's why.

I freely admit that if was a different band, I would probably think it was a pretty good album. All my hostility towards it is a holdover from the era when it came out, when all my beloved shoegazing bands were being persecuted into changing their sounds by the asinine British press. Lush and Ride went Britpop, Slowdive broke up and reformed as Mojave 3 and Chapterhouse turned into a Madchester band a few years too late for that to make much sense.

I went along for the ride with the Boo Radleys, because they stayed pretty quirky and idiosyncratic even as they transitioned from shoegaze into a more Britpop direction. (And Mojave 3 got a pass because they were in fact a significantly different band.) But I could never really follow along with the others. I still can't stand Lovelife by Lush, for example.

Slayer didn't get better, but they're remarkably consistent and never lost the path the way Metallica did with the exception of one album that dabbled in nü-metal. The second and third parts of the trilogy begun with REIGN IN BLOOD, SOUTH OF HEAVEN & SEASONS IN THE ABYSS, are more accessible but pretty great in their own right. After that, GOD HATES US ALL is a stand-out; the ferocity of its anti-religious sentiment is really impressive, especially since the lyrics were written by a hardcore atheist but sung by a practicing Catholic.

Thanks, I need to check those other releases out. I did get to see them once, to say they have a devoted fan base would be a major understatement. Never quite seen a place that fired up, of course that style of music lends itself to energy. Reminded me of my few visits to the Jockey Club back in the 80's in Newport KY.

the The - Soul Mining

Modern English - After the Snow

Kate Bush - Hounds of Love

Slayer - Reign in Blood. To be fair here, this is the only Slayer album I own but there are 3-4 songs on this bad boy that are drop dead classics so I felt no need to buy any other ones. The scream at the beginning of Angel of Death, the absolutely insane and mostly pointless dueling guitar solos and the sped up hardcore that is Criminally Insane get me rocking like no other. Sirius played that song recently on Liquid Metal and I damn near wrecked the car. Are there better thrash metal albums? Does Slayer get better later on? Probably, but something about this album is different.

Ned's Atomic Dustbin - God Fodder

AAAAARRRRGHHH!!! Modulistic terror...a vast sadistic feast....there's only one way outta here.....piece by piece!!

Yeah, that is a good one too! I know what I am going to be bumping next week when I am about the only one on my floor at work. Always great when someone does pop in and you are blasting something like Slayer - you get the "look".

A Slayer comic book would be way more interesting than any KISS comic book, that's for sure. Yah, I would have the band explode out of a volcano during the Pre-Cambrian era.

I saw Slayer live in Boston in 1990 or 1991, and someone threw a full garbage can at the band! I actually saw them live twice during the period when I was going to college in Boston from 1988-1992. The first time was the fall of 1988 in a theater that held about 2,000 people, with strict security: you couldn't even stand up in your seat, although people tried constantly and got told to sit down. The second time was at a relatively small club with no security, and the audience went wild. I stood near the back because I did not want to get "caught in a mosh."

> I know what I am going to be bumping next week when I am about the only one on my floor
> at work. Always great when someone does pop in and you are blasting something like Slayer -
> you get the "look".

I wonder how many music lovers have gotten a disciplinary action (or pink slip) for playing their favorite band out loud at work. You can't spell Hard Rock without an H and an R.

I recently got rid of my fairly complete Kate Bush collection [ca. 1978-1989] by selling off my copy of "This Woman's Work" Japanese boxed set.All of that Bush material lost its luster for me…with the exception of "The Dreaming" which was my entry point and the one album of hers that still impresses very much.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

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