This is the thread for those total bummer albums - just real bad, unfortunate records, that just happen to feature one instance of the artists best work. Immediately, David Bowie - Heroes comes to mind. Bowie has never been known for having well balanced albums, but I can't find even one song on this record besides Heroes that I can sit through. I cannot listen to this thing - but Heroes just such a brilliant piece that I can't imagine he was in the same head space doing the rest of the album. As a music listener who lives for a solid album - I hate this kind of thing. It's so depressing to have a song that means a lot to me exist in such a disappointing context. I know you guys have examples, let's hear em.
I don't know that I'd call it amazing, but Space's Female of the Species is at least a pretty good song from possibly the worst record that has a song I like on it.
What? You could not have picked a worse example. I've long argued that Bowie's run from The Man Who Sold The Moon to Scary Monsters is the best continuous run of music any artist has ever had. There's hardly anybody else in the running for that streak. Maybe Dylan, or Stevie Wonder. I mean, we're talking all-time faves here, so forgive me this indulgence. I know, everybody's got his own opinion, etc. etc., but "Heroes" is a fucking GREAT album. The Berlin trilogy is my absolute fave period of Bowie, and whatever magical combination of chemicals and brilliant collaborators he had working for him at that moment created literally some of the best music I've ever heard. "Heroes", like it's lead-in Low, is a schizophrenic record, separated into the rock A side and the ambient/experimental B side. The rock side, unlike the cold mechanics of Low which would presage the new wave movement, is harsher, more emotionally distraught. (And not without humour - "Joe The Lion" has a wry laugh where, after the cacophonous opening movement detailing what sounds like a hellish night in a Berlin bar, drops the intensity as Bowie deadpans "... it's Monday." Makes me laugh every time.) There's so much about Bowie's delivery in the Berlin trilogy that I absolutely adore, like the "Daaaaaah-ling" drawl in "Beauty And The Beast", or the great contrast between the verses of "Sons Of A Silent Age" (a sort-of sequel to "Drive-In Saturday") and the overblown, magnificent chorus. And then there's the second side. Bowie (and, to be fair, Brian Eno) was like five-to-twenty years ahead of the game there. Having shown us what new wave would be like, he then vaulted forward into Krautrock inspired post-punk and post-rock. The touchstone is clearly Neu!, another band scarily ahead of it's time, but Bowie and Eno really take the template of Krautrock and make it their own. "Heroes" is such a great album, Gabe! And to answer your original question: Any Ramones album after End Of The Century. There's always one or two good tracks, and then a pile of stuff I never ever need to hear again.
I love Bowie, but I don't think he ever constructed a full, front to back perfect album. Not once. His B-Sides are disproportionately boring compared to his A-Sides. I know this is a minority opinion, but I always think Bowie had 4 amazing songs per album, some middling tracks, and some filler. I won't even really sit through Ziggy all the way through. The songs that are good are SO FUCKING GOOD, but a bunch of it just doesn't work for me. That being said, I love Low.
Uh, to actually post on topic, my favorite Ramones's song ever is "The KKK Took My Baby Away" and it is on the absolutely horrible Pleasant Dreams, which isn't quite as bad as Subterranean Jungle but is still bad enough to make you wish the world ended with Reagan's election. Not their best tune, but definitely the best cut they'd released in years. I disagree with madkevin, though, as Too Tough to Die would be awesome if it wasn't saddled with the Ramones name.
Not to divert too far from my topic for Bowie wanking, and maybe I can actually tie this all together: It's less that I think Heroes is a terrible album, and more that I think Heroes is a brilliant production, and display of song writing and just altogether transcendent in a way that doesn't jive with the rest of that album. Like I want an alternate world where that song is the center-piece of a well constructed concept album that's equally laid back, angry, and broken as that song. I think that's part of what I was trying to get at with this. Sometimes I hear a song, and the artist managed to create a world I want to live in but never manages to ever do that again in that album or their career. David Bowie has obviously managed it all over the place. Here's another example that has little to do with the album it's on: Toots & The Maytals - Daddy's Home Toots accidentally created an alternate world where he is a brilliant soul balladeer on the level of Marvin Gaye or Al Green, and as far as I can tell, only did it that once.
See, I completely understand that line of thinking. I have an embarrassingly large number of hours of songs recorded, both rehearsal and studio, where I thought, "hey, wouldn't it sound great if this or that was added?" or "hey, wouldn't it be great if this idea was expanded upon as a full album?" Now, granted, I'm about as talented musically as Phil Rudd, so (1) what the fuck was I thinking and (2) holy shit was that ever pretentious, but I have learned something that every musician learns at some point in their careers: you are not Pink Floyd/The Beatles/The Beach Boys/whatever obscure band from Baja California that no one's ever heard of that triggercut knows of. That great concept you thought you could write? You can't. That great expansion of ideals that you thought would be so great? It isn't. If you happen to take enough cocaine and think "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we extended Hey Jude out by another three hundred thousand measures and had four key changes instead of three and had horns and an 86-instrument orchestra and piano and it'll be GREAT" then sometimes you end up with an entertaining disaster like Oasis did with Be Here Now, but you mostly just end up with Operation Mindcrime II. I'm with madkevin on "Heroes" - Bowie created the world you asked him to, it just didn't align with your expectations because your expectations are wrong. (I don't mean that offensively.) Sucks, but that's how music goes sometimes... often song to song, album to album. Low was the dark album, Heroes the bright one. That rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but then, Bowie made a career out of chucking people's expectations out of the window. I guess what I am trying to say is, sometimes that song is the single defining statement an artist can make on the subject, and that craving, that yearning, that MUST HAVE NOW GIVE ME MORE YOU IMPERFECT ARTIST WHY DIDN'T YOU is why you think it is so perfect. Musicians so often refuse to cater to that desire, and when they do it is an obvious cash-in. Hollywood? Well, why do you think we get so many shitty sequels?
I completely agree actually. Which is why I brought it up in the first place. I'm fascinated with the fleeting untraceable "luck" portion of art. How much of great music is just happy accident. I don't think Bowie did something wrong by not catering to a specific taste. In fact, I'm sure he wasn't thinking about what the album was supposed to be until it was done, at which point he doesn't have control anymore anyway. I suppose a more interesting topic would have been: "musical spaces that I wish were more fleshed out." As a songwriter myself, I know you can't actually direct the stream and the harder you try, the harder you'll probably fail. Which is exactly why it's a topic that interests me.
It isn't their defining gem in the same way that In Thru the Out Door isn't a piece of crap, but "Fool in the Rain" is a pretty ace Led Zeppelin tune. I find the topic fascinating, too! I have to admit to being unable to comply to the rules, though. For the most part I either don't think the shitty latter day album has a career-"defining" gem on it or don't believe the album is shitty (against popular opinion, eg, In Thru the Out Door). I'm wanting to pick stuff like "Ty Cobb" off Down on the Upside but then I stop and realize that Down on the Upside is a B album at worst - d'oh! So I guess I'm stuck being contrarian - sorry. :( See: Metallica releasing "sequels" to The Unforgiven. Jesus, guys, have you no shame?
That's a good example actually Bryce. It doesn't have to be a career defining gem, but just an amazing song on a subjectively shitty album. But the conversation can just go where it goes, fuck the rules. Clearly, I've already walked back Heroes being "terrible" so this thread made it exactly one post before the rules went out the window.
This is actually a surprisingly difficult question. It's easier to think of the bum song on an otherwise great album, maybe because I've been so album-oriented my whole music-nerd life. I tend to think of the album as the artistic statement, so I tend towards bands who make cohesive albums as a whole. So far, I've come up with "This Is England", from The Clash's Cut The Crap. Holy fuck is Cut The Crap a shit tornado of a record. If you ever needed proof to how integral Mick Jones was to The Clash, there it is. "I'll Be You" from The Replacements Don't Tell A Soul. I actually don't really hate Don't Tell A Soul all that much, but it's without a doubt a huge step down from the heights of Let It Be, Tim and Pleased To Meet Me. "I'll Be You" is the last, great single from one of the last great American rock bands.
"Luxuria" by the Tea Party on their 'sell-out' album. The album was made after EMI pressured the band to find a more commercial sound. Every other track is mindless dull insipid radio rock blandness. Luxuria is full blown Morrocan-inspired Canadian prog rock awesomeness. Of course, the song wasnt written by Jeff Martin, who's ego had inflated to several times the size of the universe by this pint in the bands life. It was written by Stuart Chatwood for Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and Ubisoft decided not to use it.
I have a lot of albums with only 2 or 3 really good ones, but I'm having a hard time finding one where I can truly narrow it down to just one good song. Does it count if I name a prog album with just one song?* *Trick question, there are no good one song prog albums.
Yes... Yes... Wait, No! I prefer not to think of them as separate tracks; instead, I think of them as sonatas within a symphony of brutality. Bach ain't got nothin' on Matt Pike. (Ingmar's going to crushilate my skull now.)
I think all Pet Shop Boys qualify, really: on any given PSB record, there are between zero and two fucking amazing songs. And then the rest of it is complete drek. Out of all the many many albums they've done over the years, there's a small handful of songs that are utter pop perfection, and the rest of it is more boring than Muzak. I don't understand it. Or how it's been happened with regularity for like 30 years. I'm sure I'll think of more later, but that's the one that jumped up and bit me on the frontal lobes when I read the OP.
Does this include one-hit wonders, where the band wasn't really good but they made one transcendent song?
My pick would be Queensryche's album Empire. The standout track is the Pink Floyd homage "Silent Lucidity". The rest of the album isn't terrible but it's fairly generic hard rock/power ballads that don't particularly distinguish themselves.
You know, I think it could, but that seems like an inherently less interesting area. I think if it's an album you bought and were excited about and then realized it was utter garbage minus one song, it qualifies. But there are lots of good artists that made terrible albums - this is (sort of whatever) about the one off moments of brilliance in those albums. This goes to anybody, but if I'd love some links to get posted up against the examples for context. I know next to nothing about the Pet Shop boys except they were in weird pyramid head suits at the Olympics.
Wild Mood Swings by The Cure was rather uninspired but I thought it actually opened pretty strong with Want which made the rest of the album all the more disappointing.
I read this post and my stupid mind somehow got the "pet" and the "boys" words confused in a way that made me think you were talking about Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, and suddenly I was seeing red and willing to bite your head off. Then I actually read the post. Carry on.
The number of college-age girls that paint their faces like this for certain kinds of parties is ridiculous and has ruined this incarnation of Bowie for me.
Yeah, I understand, man, college-age girls wearing keffiyehs is what really ruined my support for a free Palestinian state.
8/10. Would have been about a 4 but getting the song title wrong was a really good touch. Nicely done.
