What are some of the worst albums that you've ever heard?

My list includes The Doors' "Soft Parade".

dark side

Dittos on "Soft Parade" & also "Metal Machine Music"

McCartney II

Haven't heard the whole album, but "White Blood Cells" has "Fell in Love With A Girl," the one White Stripes song I really like. And McCartney's silly new wave album "II"? Come on people, you can do worse then that! I've been trapped in cars on long rides with the likes of Nelson (astonishingly bad), the Cher album with "Believe," and Van Halen. Now we're talkin' PAINFUL.

See, that's the difference, then. I've never had to listen to an entire Nelson album and cannot, in fact, remember even one of their songs.

I stand by McCartney II as poorly written, poorly executed garbage, a pile of crap not fresh enough to be described as "steaming hot". The nearly competent "Coming Up" may have been a huge hit, but the album as a whole was memorably bad. Nevertheless, it was sweet of the ol' geezer to try to keep up with the times, and I won't hold it against you if you want to rock out to "Temporary Secretary" all afternoon.

Disclaimer: I don't hate McCartney or his music in general.

I'll add Rob Jungklas' "Work Songs for a New Moon", which I've mentioned on this board before, to the bad albums list. Truly miserable.

I can't stand "Fell in Love with a Girl." It sounds so incredibly half-assed to me. I do like "Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground," but one good song does not a great record make.

I'm sure we could come up with even more candidates since the last time this thread was active (e.g. maybe the last three Liz Phair albums aren't the worst albums to ever be inflicted upon humanity, but damn the mighty have fallen...).

White Blood Cells by the White Stripes
pretty much anything by Sting
Son of Sam's self-titled record
Gone Troppo by George Harrison

At the risk of being a predictable broken record here, I'll never get tired of beating up on CAR WHEELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD by Lucy Williams. I plan to loathe that overpraised piece of crap until the day I die.

Just out of curiosity (and because I guess I've missed some spins of your broken record), what do you not like about Car Wheels? I'll admit that it's certainly overpraised, arguably inconsistent in the songwriting and definitely overcooked in the production, but there are still quite a few cuts on it I really like.

Just kinda sucks in general, I think, especially when compared to the two albums before it. And I think the hysterical over-reaction to its supposed greatness has had a negative impact on Williams' career because she obviously bought into the hype and went from one of the best artists around to an overindulgent, pretentious one who I consider to be barely listenable anymore.

There's no harsher critic than a former fan. Pre-WHEELS I was a rabid Williams proselytizer. Post-WHEELS, I just long for the announcement of her retirement.

But to be more specific:

She ditched a perfectly good singing voice and adopted an annoying, overly-mannered pseudo-hick vocal style that she apparently feels is more "authentic" but I think is probably just a pretentious affectation demonstrating that she's too poetic to actually sing well. After all, if Dylan and Neil Young have horrible voices, then by golly so should Lucinda.

She doesn't even bother writing choruses for most of the songs, just repeats the title a few times "Cawuncrate und burb'd wahr/Cawuncrate und burb'd wahr"

And all the supposed insights just seem pretty tedious and obvious, especially when compared to her lyrics on earlier albums.



Post Edited (08-03-07 12:18)

I can understand how you feel about her singing - I know plenty of folks who feel the same. I have to wonder, though, if it's not so much affected as subject to her letting her natural Southern accent come through more strongly. That wasn't a tone of voice particularly welcome outside of country music when she first started out.

As a songwriter goes, she's certainly past her groundbreaking years. I'll never love a Lucinda album as much as I do the s/t (if I were to point to a single instance when her career took a permanent downturn, it would be the loss of Gurf Morlix and her guitarist, bandleader and producer), but I still find her work rewarding.

Jaysus fackin christ, i could fill more pages here than 'theelephantman'
The He/She/It that REALLY pissed off the upper crust of this site while torturing the rest of us with those infinitly long sales adverts.

Well, THAT'S how many bad albums I've heard.

grand funk railroad(everyone of them)

Grave New World by Discharge.............must be heard to be believed........

mats84 wrote:

> Grave New World by Discharge.............must be heard to be
> believed........
>



the away from the pulsebeat review:

"Someday I'm gonna sit down and try to figure my dozen worst albums. Might not happen for another ten years, but this record'll figure among 'em, I can tell you that now. Idiotmetal sung by a machoman whose dick obviously points inwards. The most incredible decline in modern music. Have these people been spayed?"

i had no choice but to buy it and hear for myself. truly awful. but much like my martin gordon problem, it's even worse because it's fcc'ing discharge! if it said "Robert Plant" on the cover, it woulda been as expected.

the first Jane's Addiction studio disc

Philip Glass - Einstein On the Beach


Had to listen to it for a college class. I have a pretty high tolerance for "difficult" music -- to me, The Dilinger Escape Plan go down as easy as The Carpenters -- but this album somehow tapped into my nervous system in such a way I thought I was going to get the dry heaves. Even the memory of it makes me feel somewhat nauseated.

Give me Grand Funk 8 days a week!

have you heardlucinda williams new album?

but the fuckin commodores blew!

Adam + The Ants: Prince Charming - Bought it 35 years later for $2.00. That was $2.00 too much.
Ultravox: Brilliant - actually had 3.5 solid song on it; making it even worse than UVOX just by that fact.
Ultravox: UVOX - Made The Gift [by Midge Ure] sound like genius, comparatively.
Philip Oakey + Giorgio Moroder: S/T - I liked these guys separately in the past. Not so much together [in electric nightmares]. Use of the "8-bit orchestra hit" sample should have been made a capital offense after this one!



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

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

Funny to look at this list now. I'm not what I would call a White Stripes fan, but I've softened a lot towards their work, so if you were to ask me know, I wouldn't call White Blood Cells one of the worst albums I've ever heard.

Sting's work isn't even on my radar and wasn't at the time, so that's just a gratuitous slap. His albums don't matter enough to me to have an opinion.

The others I stand behind.



Post Edited (04-05-17 09:22)

i consider myself a martin gordon fan, but his new album (the world is your lobster) makes me wanna kick something. nothing worse than hating an album you were certain you were gonna love!

Mellencamp: Chestnut Street Incident
Mellencamp: The Kid Inside
Dylan: Self Portrait
Pete Townshend: Psychoderelict
Bob Mould: Modulate
Screaming Lord Sutch: Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends
The Doors: Full Circle
Attila: Attila (This is Billy Joel in 1970. It's unbelievably bad.)
Exene Cervenka: Running Scared
John Doe: Kissingsohard

the doors-other voices. doors without morrison.
mellencamp- chestnut street incident- as kevin wrote. not really fair cause he was not famous yet but shows you that he came a long way.
jackson browne-lawyers in love
it prob wasnt that bad but i remember listening to it once or twice and just by comparing it with his other works previously i thought it sucked.
mcartney 2
wings wild life
elvis costello -north

Hawklords (self titled)

I don't get the McCartney II hate. For a hit in 1980/81, I always thought it was pretty good.

I agree about Costello's North.

Lucinda Williams' dad is a big-time poet, so at least she comes by her pretensions honestly. I used to listen to her self-titled Rough Trade cassette quite a bit back when I worked at the local boxboard company as the "college boy" in the late eighties. I come by my lack-of-pretension pretensions honestly. The point? Some of us Southerners have a hard time coming to terms with the whole deal. I haven't loved Lucinda Williams' stuff for a long time, and she can be pretty precious, but I've been assuming she just changed, leading to more acclaim.

REM - Green

The Jesus & Mary Chain - I Hate Rock & Roll

Peter Gabriel - Up

Once I was at a show, and they played Nevermind between sets and I didn't much care for it.

If it weren't for the song "Watching the Wheels", I'd nominate Lennon/Ono's Double Fantasy.

Without getting into the obvious nominees -- albums by Styx, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Loverboy, Bon Jovi and the rest of the fake-rock bands (for whom none of us ever harbored any high expectations, I'm sure) -- I'd nominate:

Prince - The Rainbow Children
The Pretenders - Break Up the Concrete
Gang of Four - Hard
U2 - Songs of Innocence

At this point in time, I tend to ignore albums I don't like, so it's hard for me to think of anything new to add to the list. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the Waterboys' Dream Harder, which may not be as bad as I remember it. I haven't listened to it since it came out. I just remember being really excited for it and really, really, REALLY disappointed by it once it came out.

Two words: Chinese. Democracy.

Evidently, this isn't a joke.

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I'd rather buy ...

Must be a short record.

It's a single. They just re-pressed John Cage's 4'33" and slapped on a new label.