commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996

Would recommend Tori Amos to fill out the Cornell/Navarro judging panel

Down on the Upside is not great. Ty Cobb is okay, and Blow Up The Outside World. But def pale compared to Superunknown...you could kinda tell they were pretty much done

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, May 4, 2012 4:16 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, and 'Pretty Noose', 'Rhinosaur', 'Burden In My Hand', 'Never Named', 'Never The Machine Forever', 'Switch Opens', 'Overfloater' and 'An Unkind'.

yeah, befitting the era it's too long but there are still a lot of good songs

bhs overplayed to irritation threshhold was breached

that was true for me at the time, but 16 years down the road, it's gone back to just being a song i like

i swear to god there were two versions of the BHS video that played -- the first didn't have nearly as much cgi, maybe none at all? back me up here somebody

don't remember a version w/out heavy cgi. there is this though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar0SK2fDCxQ

yeah the video was super-annoying too

http://cltampa.com/binary/6aa3/black_hole_sun.jpg

love the video

the

worst

btw i just put on black love on spotify. my reaction to the whigs was the exact opposite of some of you, i first heard gentlemen like three years ago and my thought was god damn if i heard this record when i was 17 it would be one of my 10 favorite records ever. i'm not really in a place now where i connect with it 100% emotionally but it's pretty amazing music.

i swear to god there were two versions of the BHS video that played -- the first didn't have nearly as much cgi, maybe none at all? back me up here somebody

i remember this!

Thankfully on the down on the upside tour cornell played it solo acoustic so it wasnt as annoying

Oh yeah, that would totally make that song MUCH less annoying.

I give up on Soundgarden after Badmotorfinger. And really after the first half of that album. Everything up to and including "Jesus Christ Pose" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everything after.

wiki to the rescue

The video was released in June 1994.[25] After several weeks of airplay on MTV, a second version of the video was substituted containing more elaborate visual effects than the original, including the addition of a computer-generated black hole.

i'm still def an early-screamo Soundgarden stan -- but in the last year or two I've come around on Superunknown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHfhNvsYlgc

love the toys in the attic vocal rasp on "do it riiiiiiiight"

Yeah, totally remember that earlier "Black Hole Sun" video.

because this still makes me lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni632sTHZWU

after an hour I am still finding it increasingly hilarious, given all the Pumpkins articles I read creepily obsessing over D'arcy and given how strikingly cheekboned James Iha is/was, imagining pouty Baldy Corgan stood at the back of a photoshoot thinking "does this mean... they don't think I'm the cute one?!"

thank you thread

I mean...

http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/120313-billy-corgan.png

ack

hit every branch on the way down

humpty dumpty lol

He is awesome as Varys on Game of Thrones though.

Corgan's like seven feet tall--that's why he was put in the back.

hahaha nicole

he was also good in the Addams Family movies

http://i.imm.io/odjY.png

voted for 'new adventures...' without that much doubt, even tho i listened a lot to 'tiny music...' when it came out - and have fond memories of it.

also, 'no code' is prob my fav pearl jam album - not that it matters that much since i was never never a huge fan to begin with - but i don't listen to 'vitalogy' in a very long time...

Philip wins the thread. It's all about Thayil's "Whatfuckingever, man."

Down on the Upside is not great. Ty Cobb is okay, and Blow Up The Outside World. But def pale compared to Superunknown...you could kinda tell they were pretty much done

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Friday, May 4, 2012 4:16 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, and 'Pretty Noose', 'Rhinosaur', 'Burden In My Hand', 'Never Named', 'Never The Machine Forever', 'Switch Opens', 'Overfloater' and 'An Unkind'.

― The Jupiter 8 (Turrican), Friday, May 4, 2012 12:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

and "Dusty" and "Zero Chance" and "No Attention"!

btw guys i finally thought of a major label follow-up with a serious sales dropoff from '96 that i totally overlooked for the thread options:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/CrackerTheGoldenAge.jpg

I actually just listened to "I'm A Little Rocket Ship" the other day

i hate my generation!!

fight this generation

Philip wins the thread.

I always thought Cracker was pretty lame and trying way too hard.

oh god yes

lol anthony when you added that song to your spotify 'used bins' playlist at first i thought the playlist was called "I'm A Little Rocket Ship to Used Bins"

which is p otm when you think about it

Voted "Amazing Disgrace" in spite of it probably being The Posies' weakest album.

lol i'm glad that even you didn't want to vote for Wild Mood Swings

Amazing Disgrace is definitely better than Success, Every Kind of Light and Blood/Candy, though, even if you prefer the earlier stuff.

Oops. Didn't see that one. Would have went for "Wild Mood Swings" instead, but thought this was all American alternative and didn't notice it.

bullet = dodged

although I'm surprised you didn't give any consideration to the esteemed America musical acts Bush, The Cranberries or Elvis Costello

Dan so funny.

Though really, Bush is more an American act than British. By like eleventy jillion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gfey7YwuqQ

POLL it to hell and gone: DOWN ON THE UPSIDE

Though really, Bush is more an American act than British. By like eleventy jillion.

OTM!

As for Elvis Costello, "All This Useless Beauty" was maybe his last album worthy of much attention at all, and all the same sooo much less worthy of attention than the one before it.

This thread seems like it was MADE for me, because 95/96 is when I started listening to the radio and catching up on all the stuff, so my musical world was really heavily flooded with these albums and their rather long runs of singles. The soundtrack to countless hours spent designing Duke Nukem levels after school!

Better Than Ezra - Friction, Baby - Only know the singles ("King of New Orleans," "Desperately Wanting") - those are pretty solid though

Bush - Razorblade Suitcase - Owned this. It's horrible.

Counting Crows - Recovering The Sattelites - Again, decent singles - I have no beef whatsoever with "Long December" although a coworker of mine once declared "Trying to sing like that guy just makes me feel... dumpy."

The Cranberries - To The Faithful Departed - Shark-jumping moment IMO.

Hootie & The Blowfish - Fairweather Johnson - Did anyone buy this? I always had the sense they had this ENORMOUS hit record and then this one barely made any impact at all, to the point where I don't recall it even getting a second single pushed after "Old Man & Me." Which is a perfectly good Hootie song, really. You wonder if everyone who bought the first one spent the following couple of years listening to it exclusively and just got sick of their whole thing. I actually put it on recently and it's not a bad album really - but moronically sequenced with all the singles up front and the filler in the back.

Metallica - Load - I have a fondness for all the singles off this. Again, Duke Nukem time. I think "Until It Sleeps" is the first video that I remember just seeing on CONSTANTLY and wishing they would play something else.

Pearl Jam - No Code - This is a good record. It's not as good as its champions want to make out - I find a lot of it just a little TOO jammy and open-ended - but the strong songs are really strong and it has a great sound overall.

The Presidents of the United States of America - II - This is also okay! Consistent, anyway. "Ladies and Gentlemen" I like, also "Tiki God." Did what they do pretty competently. Hard to say it's somehow measurably worse than the first one.

R.E.M. - New Adventures In Hi-Fi - My vote for best here, easily. It's another overlong late-90s CD, but there's no out-and-out duds (the instrumental could go, okay) and it has a wonderfully earthy, recorded-live quality that totally fits where the band was and the kind of songs they were writing and themes they were addressing. Would have been their perfect final album had they quit at this point, and I think there's a substantial REM fan contingent that would rate this their career best. Basically this was killed by a) terrible choice of lead single and b) their fanbase had always been too big for the kind of band they were and it was sort of inevitable that that bubble would burst. I think I got that take from someone on ILX though...

Soundgarden - Down On The Upside - This is also very good, also terribly over-long and badly in need of an edit. Did we do a thread about this one? I like it a lot but there's easily four or five songs you could chop and not miss. But great material - and "commercially disappointing" only relative to the previous record going 5x platinum, right?

Stone Temple Pilots - Tiny Music... Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop - Great glammy singles and lazy, "creative" filler. "Art School Girlfriend"? Jesus Christ.

They Might Be Giants - Factory Showroom - A weird record for them, honestly - clearly an attempt to step back a little from John Henry and get back some of the quirk to their sound after being so excited about sounding like a "real band," ie, a boring alt-rock band. Oddly enough, this one always felt too short to me and this is where I got off the TMBG bus (well, I did buy the live album after this). Some great songs on it though - "Spiraling Shape," "Your Own Worst Enemy," "Til My Head Falls Off"... Anyway, while I'm not sure this belongs here (how well did John Henry sell exactly? Surely Flood has to be their highest-profile record?), it still belongs among this company because it easily has THE worst cover art of any of these records.

Weezer - Pinkerton - It's okay. I tried hard to like it more than I did, because of all the cult praise - that would have been a few years later I think. Just a kind of dreary, unexciting record, and I don't think that's because of its "serious themes" or "darkness," or whatever, because in fact the songwriting is still generally pretty solid - it's just that the hooks sort of sit there on the disc instead of leaping out the speaker, seems like a production issue or maybe just not spending enough time adding the special little touches. This might be the biggest creative drop of any of these IMO - the best stuff here still doesn't measure up to the pure brilliance of the album cuts on the blue one.