best album on Rolling Stone's list of 50 genuinely horrible albums by brilliant artists

The majority of these seem to be "should have stopped one or two albums ago" records or "the member(s) everyone liked/cared about is gone" albums, or both. Having never heard it, I'm idly curious what makes The Bridge worse than anything else Billy Joel (who is The Fucking Worst) ever released. I agree that the Pantera album is a cheat; the ballsy choice would have been The Great Southern Trendkill, which was released at their commercial peak and is absolute fucking garbage from front to back. I also feel like Neil Young and Lou Reed have at least six or seven other albums each that could have qualified for this list, and I guess the only reason there's no Eric Clapton on the list is nobody thinks he's brilliant anymore.

Oh, and where's Goddess in the Doorway? Including that would have been hilarious.

Another good candidate: the Stooges' The Weirdness, one of the worst betrayals of an artistic legacy ever.

Yeah, Cut The Crap had at least several keepers, best I recall---album from this list I best recall gets my vote: Countrymen, cos rolling country reggae Willie feels right, often enough. And speaking of Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, he also shows up on "Cool Water," which she divining-rod guides through a ever-apt Western drought mention.

I do have a friend who only likes pre-Phil Pantera, and he loves this album

it’s fun as an oddity but i def prefer them in their final form w Phil

red rocket is a hilarious track, perfectly stupid and aligned with all the other low tier dumb hair metal

I've never heard any of the pre-Phil albums, but Power Metal (the first Phil album) is a great record and deserves to be reissued.

re Billy Joel, both Storm Front and The Bridge felt like declines because they were the first albums of his not produced by Phil Ramone. Whatever else their problems are, The Stranger et al sound good (with The Nylon Curtain having its own particular weird sound).

Having never heard it, I'm idly curious what makes The Bridge worse than anything else Billy Joel (who is The Fucking Worst) ever released.

It is the weakest of his albums imo, but there are others that come close: he's more a singles artist than an album artist. The Bridge has "A Matter of Trust" and "This is the Time", both of which I love, so I wouldn't call it horrible even if the album tracks are meh

xp Yeah Storm Front is easier to make the case for worst, because everyone hates its biggest single

Total Devo is so much worse than Smooth Noodle Maps. The latter has “Post Post Modern” man which is a legitimately good single! Which I didn’t even know about until hearing the album!

“I go to extremes” is a legit good song tho, re strom front

lol it's not! Forced hilarity is what he does worst.

chalk mark in a rain storm is good too, “the beat of black wings” is A+++

Yeah, that's a keeper. Besides "Good Friends" and "The Impossible Dreamer" (which I listed upthread), other '80s cuts I like are "Chinese Cafe/Unchained Melody," her cover of "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care, "My Secret Place" and "The Tea Leaf Prophecy (Lay Down Your Arms)."

Re: Billy Joel, I given him a couple of chances, even doing a deep dive once, and my recollection is that the earlier stuff generally came off better because it seemed to fit his sensibilities better and more organically. But regardless I've never had the urge to put on his records.

"My Secret Place" -- one of the few modern duets where they sing as if they're in the same room.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StCve-J4ofk

Shame he became a fascist on that album but I guess "I Go to Extremes" makes sense in that regard

Whoah wait, what did Joel do?

Never like witless 'worst' lists but Ye is a deserving No. 1

Xpost just a bad joke involving the name of the album

Elsewhere, It's Hard has a great single, a really really fantastic single and I've Known No War. All fantastic. The Bridge starts with the only Billy Joel song I ever listen to (cod-Police though it is). Idlewild isn't really anyone's idea of "genuinely horrible", is it? Ditto Chaos and Disorder. The Elder is a funny and reasonably involving Ezrin folly. Calling All Stations is good for 10 minutes, esp on worldbeat-Savage Garden fusion Congo (tho both of these first two songs fade out mid-verse, as though the album is giving up on itself. But that in itself is pretty diverting imo). Smooth Noodle Maps is enjoyable diseased AOR. Dog Eat Dog has Fiction, The Three Great Stimulants and the live musique concrete Smokin' - all of which I play more than anything off Hejira (sorry). Full Circle doesn't have Jim Morrison on it and it also has Mosquito on it. Gone Troppo has the gorgeous Circles. Never Let Me Down has Glass Spider (like someone's dad trying to scare their kids, the baby spiders would get scared and search FRANtically for their mother).

Cut the Crap is fantastic - an atomically flattened punk sound collage, the pop kid brother of As the Veneer of Democracy Stars to Fade, the birth of late 80s/early 90s crush collision indie, the trojan PC Music yada yada. It absolutely needs a rest from these stupid lists but it will never happen will it? Similarly, Two Virgins tired and dead from its nine millionth bollocking from disengaged rock critics. Squeeze is so unassuming it would barely inspire much commentary in either direction if the circumstances were different but here it is making its 1000th appearance. The fantastic American Life is a fascinatingly contradictory album - a breakdown in character and personal values, a rerouted strive for 'real', depicted very audibly via extreme digital manipulation and countless other audio boulders, making the thematic tension in the album hard to ignore. Compares very favourably with Trans, 808s and George Michael's True Faith (which could potentially make the songs equivalent of this list).

Umm. Mistrial is shit but Rolling Stone once described Video Violence as a "slicked-up Sister Ray slammer" which makes me want to like it.

lol it's not! Forced hilarity is what he does worst.

xxp ah, no worries, I didn't match the song to the correct album title.

FWIW, I'll commend Joel for his outspokenness. For example (from Greil Marcus's Real Life Rock Top 10 column):

Billy Joel, Madison Square Garden (New York, August 21)

For his encore, nine days after Nazis marched and killed in Charlottesville and the president of the United States de­murred, Joel appeared with yellow stars on the front and back of his jacket. The signifier gave him a fierce, humbled dignity, which his face and his weighted, burdened posture said was less his own than that which those who wore the Jüden badge before him were stripped of.

“Time Will Crawl” is a top 5 Bowie single

Wow, nice

Thanks for sharing, bird. Missed that at the time

Outkast Idlewild is great wtf

Well maybe not great but at least 25% of the album is worth it and that’s more than I can say for other albums in here.

Otm

Mistrial is fine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dojTm4KtSk

I dislike it but am attracted to it, as I am all maligned (and frequently very strange) mid-80s synth album by mid-life rockers.

(The Umm was my attempt to represent me looking for what else to defend, not a shutting down of Mistrial fans, if it looked like that)

A lot of these albums seem to have been chosen mainly because they came after some of the band had left (Monkees, Who) and most of them I'm familiar with have some good stuff on. Still, a deserving 1.

I really like The Kinks Present a Soap Opera - it's the Kinks go Crossroads! Some brilliant tracks like "Holiday Romance". Schoolboys in Disgrace or any of their last few albums after would've made more sense for me.

I also think Bowie's Never Let Me Down is half a really decent album. "Time Will Crawl" is fantastic, and the Lennon-esque title track is classic too. It's frontloaded with the good stuff, but you know he was trying, unlike on Tonight.

I appreciate not even some Elvis obsessives have heard all the movie soundtracks, but Fun in Acupulco is far from the nadir. It's got a real gem in the fuzzy, Merseybeat-ish "Slowly but Surely" - among my favourite 60s Elvis tracks. Paradise, Hawaiian Style or It Happened at the World's Fair, now those are painful.

“It’s Hard” is probably the worst original LP by the Who, but it is more middling than bad. Townshend was a mess and had kinda raided his current songs for Empty Glass, then they had to rush this one out before what became their ‘first’ last tour.

Kiss’ “Unmasked” I think is worse than “The Elder”. Even in the days when Animalized was a new tape and I listened to all sorts of KISS, I never liked Unmasked at all. It’s worse than the solo albums.

Full Circle is not as good as Other Voices but some of the music is interesting. Robbie and Ray were not Jimbo you know…that Peking tune is pretty cool. Those dudes should have hooked up with Randy California or something.

gross

https://i.imgur.com/4Ie3p4u.jpg

Is that guy at the end supposed to be a specific critic or something?

Probably <all critics> Kiss were pretty well-hated by that wing of the music press.

always had a soft spot for "video violence" from Mistrial

I vividly remember seeing that Kiss cartoon as a kid circa 1980

I’ve always been mystified by the dislike of Dog Eat Dog and Chalk Marks…

lol i know so many dudes that were kids when unmasked came out and they love it

oh dear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWNYLMUg6B0

That Aerosmith album is pure cheese but not in a bad way

few things-

-rolling stone is still terrible
-idlewild is the correct answer and again: rolling stone is still terrible
-no dirty work??? c'mon rolling stone, you wannabe hip, get with the memes
-because of this... um, list... i'm gonna have an 80s/90s joni marathon today so not all is lost!

I don't know most of these, but came here to rep for Soap Opera and am happy to see that several have already done so. I would actually love recommendations for any similar music-hall inspired rock records. Deaf School the closest thing I can think of at the moment.

Have you heard, from the same era, Trouble by Sailor? They're a minor group but with a very strong "identity" triangulating glam, music hall and 40s movie signifiers.

“It’s Hard” is probably the worst original LP by the Who, but it is more middling than bad. Townshend was a mess and had kinda raided his current songs for Empty Glass, then they had to rush this one out before what became their ‘first’ last tour.

― The Artist formerly known as Earlnash, Thursday, February 16, 2023 10:20 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Oof, I love the Who, but there's only three songs off It's Hard that I would listen to. I kind of wish they had put out a 12" single as their ostensible farewell rather than a whole album - "Eminence Front" with "Athena" and "Cry If You Want" as the B-sides.

― birdistheword, Thursday, February 16, 2023 1:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

It's Hard has my all-time least favorite Who song, "It's Your Turn." It sounds like the intro music to a 1982 cable-access sports program. What I've never understood is why/how John Entwistle's songs went from funny, wry, and clever ("905" being the last of these) to utterly faceless corporate rock.

Daltrey hated It's Hard and said it never should have been released. They started recording it while Pete was still in rehab, so he's not on "It's Your Turn." It took two weeks to record and apparently less time than that to write. Pete wanted to retire from touring -- and he had the songwriting royalties to make this possible -- so, unbeknownst to them until the advertising went out, their managers billed the tour as the "Farewell Tour." It worked, as they sold out massive venues, but no one else in the band had been consulted about this "no more touring" business.

The band accused Townshend of keeping his best songs for his solo records, which Townshend has denied, but there's some truth to it. During the session for "Rough Boys" Kenney Jones told Pete, "This is a Who song!" Pete basically said, "No it isn't, and it's not your call" and refused to entertain the thought of presenting it to the rest of the band. Then again, the Who with Moon had recorded "Empty Glass" for Who Are You but the band rejected it.

If they'd compiled something with the Face Dances outtakes "I Like Nightmares," "Dance It Away," and "Somebody Saved Me" added to "Eminence Front," "Athena," "Cry If You Want," "I've Known No War," and maybe "It's Hard," it wouldn't be a classic, and barely long enough for an album, but it wouldn't be nearly as underwhelming as It's Hard ended up being.

lol just saw that RS gave It's Hard five stars upon release.

lol of course

Have you heard, from the same era, Trouble by Sailor?

Yes! I have their first two albums, good call.