Least Favorite Best Albums

[Larry Schuler]

I liked Bowie’s last two darker experimental-ish old man records and it’s nice when he pops up in a movie soundtrack here and there but his main catalogue is locked behind a door in my head labeled “classic rock - do not open”. All of Pink Floyd is behind there. Classic rock is my least favorite best rock genre*.

Edit: *this does not include 70s and 80s power pop or punk rock though. I can listen to that pretty much all day.

[westofyou]

I liked Bowie’s last two darker experimental-ish old man records and it’s nice when he pops up in a movie soundtrack here and there but his main catalogue is locked behind a door in my head labeled “classic rock - do not open”. All of Pink Floyd is behind there. Classic rock is my least favorite best rock genre*.

Edit: *this does not include 70s and 80s power pop or punk rock though. I can listen to that pretty much all day.

Never felt like Bowie was classic rock back then. Especially Ziggy, Diamond Dogs and Station to Station. It was really that Bowie Changes album that was big, all the "hits" etc... had friends in bands that played Suffrage in City back in 1977 and that was considered "Punk"

[M2]

I liked Bowie’s last two darker experimental-ish old man records and it’s nice when he pops up in a movie soundtrack here and there but his main catalogue is locked behind a door in my head labeled “classic rock - do not open”. All of Pink Floyd is behind there. Classic rock is my least favorite best rock genre*.

Edit: *this does not include 70s and 80s power pop or punk rock though. I can listen to that pretty much all day.

As we get further away from that era, I'm better able to go back into it and listen to the stuff that got oversaturated in my youth. I don't do it a lot, but I can bungee into it.

[Falls City Beer]

Speaking of Bowie, I’ll go with Ziggy Stardust. I hate the production and it sounds like a watered down imitation of T. Rex, the far better glam band. I think Ziggy and Aladdin Sane are his weakest albums.

Neil Young—Harvest: a yawner of an album surrounded chronologically by absolute greatness. I’m glad it put him on the map, but I’m also glad he headed for the ditch.

[Betterread]

I'll tilt at something a little more sacred. I'll preface this by saying I've got no issue with the record itself. It's a fine, quirky listen, but I get five kinds of irked when people fawn over it. It also might not have general consensus as the artist's best work, but it ranks pretty on most lists and fans use it to prove they're not some rabble who just likes the hits.

Anyway, David Bowie's Low always struck me as an outtakes compilation. Now, it's Bowie and Brian Eno messing around in studios, and they're both brilliant, so what we get are some really cool earworms. Yet they don't really add up to songs. The vocals say very little and are there mostly for percussion. The songs lack structure and the album doesn't offer up anything in terms of a perspective or vision. They're mostly playing around with ideas that will become more fleshed out songs on Heroes and The Lodger. We never were in danger of hearing anything from Low on the radio.

The record might be a very nice ball of dough, but they didn't bake it enough for it to become a loaf of bread.

Oh, and while I'm uttering profanities, let's toss Kid A into the bonfire. Hooray Thom, you made something completely atonal.

Thanks for referencing this album I enjoyed at the time and currently. side one has great songs about loneliness, alienation, failing relationships and crappy friends. Every single track is a distilled pop gem. Side two’s instrumentals are less compelling to me, but warszawa is a moving tribute and it inspired Joy Division. This recording introduced me to Eno’s ambient music and I think it is better than Bowie’s ambient music in comparison. I give Bowie a lot of credit for fighting to regain his life, health and integrity after hitting the depths of a rock star heroin addiction. He showed me with this album that he still was inspired by music, German music in particular. After the Berlin trilogy, he never matched that level of quality again.

[Revering4Blue]

This won’t be a popular choice, but I’m going to go with the Cars’ debut album.

Yes, it’s still great in many respects, and perhaps I’ve grown tired if all of the overplayed tracks on that album. But I’ve always been partial to Candy’O and Heartbeat City. I’ve yet to listen to either Panorama or Shake It Up albums in their entirety, and I should.

Lastly, for as much as it was panned, Door To Door - the last Cars album with Ben Orr - is, IMO, criminally underrated.


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[Betterread]

This won’t be a popular choice, but I’m going to go with the Cars’ debut album.

Yes, it’s still great in many respects, and perhaps I’ve grown tired if all of the overplayed tracks on that album. But I’ve always been partial to Candy’O and Heartbeat City. I’ve yet to listen to either Panorama or Shake It Up albums in their entirety, and I should.

Lastly, for as much as it was panned, Door To Door - the last Cars album with Ben Orr - is, IMO, criminally underrated.


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CandyO is better, except for Just what I needed. Overall, the Cars for me, made shiny glossy pop classics, with absolutely no soul. Their sound is great. The song meanings are as empty as Taylor Swift or Katy Perry.

[texasdave]

Elvis Costello's King of America bored me to death.

[Falls City Beer]

Elvis Costello's King of America bored me to death.

I agree. It’s a snoozer.

[Revering4Blue]

CandyO is better, except for Just what I needed. Overall, the Cars for me, made shiny glossy pop classics, with absolutely no soul. Their sound is great. The song meanings are as empty as Taylor Swift or Katy Perry.

Just What I Needed, Bye Bye Love and You’re All I’ve Got Tonight are easily my favorites from that album and really the only tracks from that album I’ll go out of my way to listen to.

The Candy O tracks, even the radio hits (pop and/or rock) save for Let’s Go, have been largely forgotten. 43 years after said album’s release, I still can’t figure out why:

- It’s All I Can Do - rock radio hit that it was- failed to reach the Pop Top 40.

- The Title track and Dangerous Type (my favorite Cars song with Ocasek singing lead) - both huge AOR radio hits at the time - were never even released as singles in the United States, if anywhere.


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[westofyou]

Speaking of Bowie, I’ll go with Ziggy Stardust. I hate the production and it sounds like a watered down imitation of T. Rex, the far better glam band. I think Ziggy and Aladdin Sane are his weakest albums.

Neil Young—Harvest: a yawner of an album surrounded chronologically by absolute greatness. I’m glad it put him on the map, but I’m also glad he headed for the ditch.

Ditch is all Briggs, so Elliot gets Neil to do Harvest, Gold Rush and make some money so he can get with Briggs and drive into the ditch

[M2]

Elvis Costello's King of America bored me to death.

But that's not close to his best album, right?

[M2]

CandyO is better, except for Just what I needed. Overall, the Cars for me, made shiny glossy pop classics, with absolutely no soul. Their sound is great. The song meanings are as empty as Taylor Swift or Katy Perry.

I think they essentially invented American new wave. They were poppy, but all forms of new wave were fundamentally poppy. And, yes, their sound IS great. I can still remember where I was the first time I heard them, and there's not a lot of bands I can say that about. I never got to see them at the Rat (the club in Boston which essentially spawned them). They were way too big by the time I arrived in town, but from what I'm told it was a near-religious experience. I still think there ought to be plaque where the club used to be (now a luxury hotel).

But I like that some people don't like it. Ballsy pick.

[Dom Heffner]

CandyO is better, except for Just what I needed. Overall, the Cars for me, made shiny glossy pop classics, with absolutely no soul. Their sound is great. The song meanings are as empty as Taylor Swift or Katy Perry.

I think a better comparison is Def Leppard Def Leppard is empty. Taylor Swift is not empty. Heck, her stuff may be too loaded.

[Betterread]

I think a better comparison is Def Leppard Def Leppard is empty. Taylor Swift is not empty. Heck, her stuff may be too loaded.

I am well aware of how ignorant I am about current pop music. I don’t understand Taylor Swift and Beyoncé at all. And when I ask most people if Kendrick Lamar and Frank Ocean are pop music, I am consistently told No.