Category: 
Well, for those that want to know, here they are in all their glory - the Top 10 Worst Bloody Albums of all time. These aren’t just bad, and they aren’t just a bunch of shit bands (like Sublime, Aerosmith, or anyone from American Idol), but rather these are all by artists who delivered something great in their career at one time or another. In fact, three of these bands are currently in my top 10, and all but Tears for Fears have been in my top 20 at some point in my life. So without further adieu here they are:
The Sisters of Mercy. This is one of the top three original awesome Goth bands of all time (Bauhaus and Siouxsie & The Banshees being the top two) with their EPs and transcendent first album “First and Last and Always”. Then they got a chick and it all went to shit with their abominable record “Floodland”.
The Sisters of Mercy. Another from the Sisters. As I discuss regarding Siouxsie below, best-of’s usually aren’t on my best or worst lists as I generally completely disregard their very existence - if you like a band you better own their entire catalogue (up to where they stopped putting out decent product of course), while best-of’s are for people with the attention span of a ferret on crystal meth. Sisters of Mercy’s “Slight Case of Over Bombing” best-of sports an awesome cover, so +8 points for that. Minus several million for the garbage contained within.
Siouxsie & and the Banshees. Okay, so it’s not fair to include a “best of”, but remember that Siouxsie’s best-of “Once Upon a Time” is so good it’s in my top 200 (in my top 70 actually) - it’s the only official release of their best song “Hong Kong Garden”. The follow-up collection “Twice Upon A Time: The Singles” is ripe full of the worst material they mustered out with their quickly diminishing creative abilities. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Siouxsie - and a Creatures gig was the best time I’ve ever had a concert - but contained herein you have all their most heinous aural atrocities.
Simple Minds. Well, EVERYTHING after their near-perfect record “Sparkle in he Rain” completely sucked ass, but we should mark the occasion with the first album they did after that excellent one, which was “Once Upon A Time”. As elegant a lesson as I can find in how to loose your entire goth/punk fan base by switching to U2 wannabe pop crap.
Tears for Fears. Their first record, “The Hurting” was a complete end-to-end masterpiece. Then they figured out how to write the most boring MTV accessible pop offal and put it out on an album entitled “Songs From the Big Chair”. Why couldn’t it have been an electric chair upon which Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal slowly fried? I had it on vinyl and burned it in my backyard.
The Police. I loved Stewart Copeland’s percussion work, Summers processed guitar workings, and even Sting’s beauty, voice, and pop song-writing sensibility. But it all got way too out of hand by their 5th and final album “Synchronicity”, by which time Sting had squelched Stewart’s and Andy’s input to but a drizzle, as they were eclipsed by Sting’s planetary sized ego. I have to give him credit for allowing the awesome tracks “Mother” by Andy (so un-pop I am extremely shocked the record company A&M allowed it out of the studio) and Stewart’s “Miss Gradenko”, far and away the only two tracks on the album worth hearing.
U2. Their first three studio records and fourth release of the live “Under a Blood Red Sky” album set them up as one of the greatest post-punk bands of all time. Although they should’ve stopped when they were ahead they, as everyone, and I do mean everyone, on Earth is so painfully aware, did not. They went on to put out reasonably decent product for a few decades, seemingly etching their place as one of the top three college radio/alternative dinosaur bands still putting out worthwhile material. And then came “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”. Sporting an ego as big as Sting’s, Bono finally pushed his band over the brink and into extinction. For those keeping score at home the other two dinosaur bands are R.E.M. and Depeche Mode; only the latter has been good/great from beginning to the present and still holds promise. Depeche Mode are the only dinosaur band left, and they are a damn good band - in Bad Man’s Top 20, of course, although somewhere in the high-teens.
Nirvana. “MTV Unplugged in New York”. Oh my goodness. An otherwise quintessentially awesome punk band of God status, just who’s idea was it to take all the power out of the music, without which it sits like an empty limp floppy dead thing on the floor? This sucks sucks sucks. I tell you right now - you heard it here first - it wasn’t Courtney that killed Kurt, it was this record. And thank God - if Kurt had put out another album like this there’d be even more fatalities.
The Cure. I save the best for last. The Cure is far and away my all-time favorite band, and even their last two decade’s worth of records aren’t terrible, but not good enough to be a dinosaur in the good sense. They once put out a record which I bought on release date. I excitedly got it home and listened to it. It was so incredibly awful I took it and sold it at a loss, just to get it out of my house. I am a ferocious Cure collector, having several hundred CDs and bootlegs, and 350 live shows on my computer. “Mixed Up” is without a doubt the worst album ever recorded, a double jeopardy wherein the band, apparently knowingly and actively participating, remixed all their greatest songs into annoying dance club shit. Not even with the good dance beat - it was more of the Rap R&B club beat. Someone should have fed Bob more that day so he could’ve been as fat as he is now and wouldn’t have been able to fit through the studio door to wreak this aural tragedy upon the universe.
I need your help! Notice there are only 9 on this top 10? If you comment with a contender that I believe is one of the best “worst” albums I’ll add it to this page. Anonymity protected, of course.
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Comments
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 11th, 2007 at 6:54 pm and is filed under rants, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Worst albums of all-time? Well, that’s easy to do. Just take what sells well.
But you’re not doing that. You’re picking bands that otherwise should be churning out good albums. I think the title should be “Top 10 Most Disappointing Albums of All-Time.”
Now, most disappointing - Judas Priest’s Turbo. Priest go pop metal, and only regain form (and credibility) with Painkiller, four painful years later.
Metallica’s Load. My God, that has to be not only the most disappointing album of all-time, but one of the worst as well. Metallica becomes an alternative band. In fact, even Kennedy of MTV’s Alternative Nation called them an “alternative” band. What is alternative an alternative to? Talent. That makes Load and everything Metallicapose did after it alternative garbage.
Iron Maiden’s Somewhere in Time. Iron Maiden in ‘85 was one of the best Metal bands on the planet. In ‘86, they decide to go “progressive.” Iron Maiden never made anything worth listening to after ‘85. That’s it. The band’s dead.
Of those 3 bands, only Priest redeemed themselves. Metallica proved that the wrong three members died on that bus accident. And Maiden should have quit while they were ahead.
All the albums Metallica did after Cliff Burton died. And the new Dixie Chicks.
I actually love Floodland, but do see the difference between it and First and Last and Always. I own A Slight Case of Overbombing - the title alone indicates to me that Andrew knew exactly what he was doing - but have to agree with you.
You do make me feel guilty for having the second of Siouxsie’s Best Of and not having the first. Must contact local record store.
Agree with you on every score re: the Police’s Synchronicity and your assessment of Sting’s/Bono’s egos. I’m not sure those two can even be in the same city at the same town without some sort of im/explosion.
Completely on with Tears for Fears, although I will confess that Songs from the Big Chair was my first of their CDs - and the only one now that does not get played.
Kathleen - sounds like we were separated at birth. You obviously have great taste and exceptional musical knowledge.
And I’m a complete slacker when it comes to my friends. They’re all music aficionados who ran the radio station in college. I’m an 80s/ punk/postpunk/goth/industrial obsessed person. And I live to dance, although my knee objects these days.