10 albums that didn’t deserve to be hated

Mötley Crüe – Mötley Crüe

Looking back fondly on any kind of hair metal album usually involves grading on a curve. The appeal behind a lot of those records was how fun dumb fun the band seemed to be having in the studio, and depending on how one can stomach certain dated fashions, it can be a lot of fun belting songs at the top of your lungs. While Mötley Crüe went from campy fun to knuckle-dragging stupidity throughout their career, how is it that one of their most mature albums got swept under the rug?

Granted, it’s not like most people didn’t see this coming, either. Vince Neil was already out of the band, and any Behind the Music will tell you that the “dark” album is where things start going wrong. Since this was the era when grunge started taking over, though, hearing the band get more metallic with age could have been a decent road to go down had John Corabi been able to do more, especially on tracks like ‘Misunderstood’ and the single ‘Hooligan’s Holiday.’

Then again, this was the right album at the wrong time for a lot of people. Most hair metal fans weren’t willing to accept a version of the band without Neil, and no grunge fans were going to be picking up any record with Mötley Crüe on the front, so their self-titled record is stuck in that purgatory where it’s too good to hate on but too weird for anyone to throw their spandex back on and tease up their hair.

X – Def Leppard

Then again, The Crüe weren’t the only ones safe from the changing times. The entire hair metal movement seemed to be kicked to the curb the minute that people started jumping on the alternative hype train, and if there was anyone who didn’t deserve to have an edgy rock and roll makeover, it was Def Leppard. And while they did recover from it nicely once the late 1990s kicked in, fans were even more disappointed when they shifted too far the other way in the 2000s.

While everyone wants hit singles in the industry, X was the moment where fans started questioning what Def Leppard was even doing, with half of the songs sounding like they were trying to soundtrack some 2000s coming-of-age movie. Although the biggest answer to why it failed could have been that Mutt Lange wasn’t there, that still doesn’t mean that the entire album is a dud.

As far as pop rock standards are concerned, this is actually a fairly solid take on the group’s sound, taking all of the hooks that they learned on Hysteria and layering on those vocal harmonies on ‘Long Long Way To Go’. Making rock and roll with the same production values as someone like Michelle Branch doesn’t necessarily sound like the best fit, but looking at how Leppard pulled it off, their clubbing by critics and rock fans has never felt less justified.

Grace Under Pressure – Rush

Rush’s entire fanbase tends to divide right down the middle when talking about their work in the 1980s. Moving Pictures is rightfully considered a classic, but even the band has had mixed feelings about how well their synthesiser period ended up. While anyone clamouring for Alex Lifeson’s guitar work may have been disappointed, Grace Under Pressure is where they go past the kitschy schlock and start getting into something a bit more heavy on the heart.

While Rush were never the kind of sentimental act that wrote toothless love songs, a lot of the tracks on here are about dissecting one’s connection with those around them. Once fans muscle their way past the Flock of Seagulls-style Casios on ‘Afterimage,’ there’s a gripping tale about what it means to lose someone closest to you. And anyone even remotely familiar with history owes it to themselves to listen to ‘Red Sector A,’ with Geddy Lee singing about the horrors of someone growing up in concentration camps.

Although Rush would find their grit a little bit later, Grace Under Pressure is a case of grit in a different form. The music itself might not be all that deep and some of it has aged like fine gouda, but unless you’re in a romantic relationship with your copy of 2112 or Fly By Night, there’s no reason to ignore the album strictly because there are some instruments that you don’t like.

A Thousand Suns – Linkin Park

The fact that Linkin Park was able to even function in the first place is a miracle. By the time they released their debut in 2000, the rap-rock movement had become the biggest embarrassment in rock history, and no one really needed another band to whine about their problems. There was something about the way that all of them worked together, though, and when they did eventually decide to break away from the herd, their bid to get into the same area as Radiohead actually went over a lot better than expected.

While many rock fans may have been bothered by A Thousand Suns at the time, this was the moment when the band started taking a cerebral approach to their sound. Despite getting bogged down by a few too many interludes and the occasional song that simply didn’t work, hearing them tell the story of a nuclear war across 15 tracks is borderline cinematic at points, even finding some time to make masterpieces like ‘Waiting for the End’ in between experiments like ‘Wretches and Kings.’

But the biggest tragedy of this record was how it shook the band’s confidence, given the fact that Living Things may as well have been a soft reboot of what they had been doing on Minutes to Midnight. A Thousand Suns might not have been a perfect record by any stretch, but if they had a chance to build on what they started, maybe bands like Imagine Dragons would have known not to crawl up their own ass.

Be Here Now – Oasis

Oasis were bound to collapse no matter where they went after What’s the Story Morning Glory. No band touches the sky that quickly without picking up a few bad habits, but when critics talk about Be Here Now in retrospect, it’s like they’re talking about watching one of the biggest tragedies that the music world has ever seen. Then again, the crimes that Noel and Liam Gallagher committed on this album aren’t nearly as dire as some people make them out to be.

Granted, the songs are too long and are full of unnecessary pieces that shouldn’t be there, but the tunes at the heart of them are decent. ‘I Hope I Think I Know’ is one of the best power-pop songs that Noel ever wrote, and even though audiences swear by ‘Slide Away’ as Liam’s finest vocal performance, ‘Don’t Go Away’ certainly gave it stiff competition with the way that he comes in during the chorus.

While the record could have benefited from a few rewrites and maybe someone telling Noel to tone down the amount of coke in the studio, it does feel like the grandiose album that they wanted to make. It might not have been what everyone expected at the time, but looking at how much it set the world on fire on the day of its release, this was the 1990s equivalent of watching The Beatles make Sgt Pepper and flame out like on Let It Be on the same album.

Relapse – Eminem

Eminem has never been a rapper that people have needed to take seriously since the 2020s. The stench of Revival is still fresh in everyone’s minds, and even after putting his Slim Shady persona to bed, it doesn’t feel like anyone has to care about the dad jokes that he puts into his bars whenever he sings. For someone who has been trying to capture that dark persona for years now, though, Relapse may be one of the few times where he sounded genuinely insane like he did on his first outing.

While The Marshall Mathers LP is in contention for one of the most unrelenting albums in his discography, Relapse is the perfect record for someone looking for something a bit more psychological. Since the whole record plays out like him coming back to his old demons in hip-hop, hearing him inhabit different characters works surprisingly well, even when he does some of the silly accents on ‘3am’ or ‘Same Song and Dance.’

The accents alone were enough for Eminem to cringe at when looking back on the record, but that’s hardly fair. This was an example of him getting his bearings back again, and now that he had some fresh ideas and some of the best Dre beats of the era behind him, this feels like the proper turning point of Em’s career before he started making songs that sounded better in sports montages than on the radio.

White Light/White Heat – The Velvet Underground

Nothing that The Velvet Underground ever made was meant for the hippie generation. People liked the idea of peace, love and understanding back in the day, but Lou Reed would have much rather talked about life in the gutter and what was really going on on the mean streets of New York City every single day. And if critics weren’t having it when they released their debut, bringing raw noise into the picture wasn’t exactly going to solve the problems that their detractors had.

While White Light/White Heat might be unrelenting from start to finish, it does make for some of the heaviest moments of the late 1960s. ‘Sister Ray’ is never going to be the kind of hit single that you’d hear out of The Rolling Stones, but hearing them get more and more discordant is the beginnings of punk rock years before bands like Ramones and Sex Pistols started birthing the genre.

And looking at how much of an impact they had on acts like David Bowie on this record, it’s clear that White Light/White Heat wasn’t the kind of record that was slagged off because it was garbage. This was the first sounds of what rock and roll could be like, and if the rest of the world didn’t bother catching up to them, that was their problem.

Some Time in New York City – John Lennon

A lot of the albums that turn up on this list end up being a bit of a mess behind the scenes. Many of the biggest names in music don’t always have the greatest production schedule, and that normally leads to many songs either getting discarded or production that leaves a lot to be desired. But even for an ex-Beatle, fans were never going to be ready for John Lennon to get as vicious as he did when he made Some Time in New York City.

While this frequently tops the lists for many fans as Lennon’s worst mainline album, that’s only if you look at the live disc. Despite having some chaotic noise on the flipside, the studio album is a pretty interesting back and forth between Lennon and Yoko Ono. Even if some people get chills at the mere mention of Ono’s name, her songs are at least as good as her husband’s on this record, making a playful song like ‘Sisters O Sisters’ and managing to make her screaming fit in the song ‘We’re All Water.’

And even when Lennon is making songs with fewer hooks, it’s impossible to hate on a song like ‘New York City,’ which is practically his own take on a Chuck Berry number. Most Beatles albums had a certain expectation from fans before they even came out, but considering the strange detours that this album takes and how political it can be, this is the closest we will ever be to hearing how Lennon would write his own Bob Dylan album.

Continuum – John Mayer

Anyone who has ever turned on the radio in the 2000s has probably wanted to punch John Mayer at least once. He may have been perfectly competent as a vocalist and one of the best guitarists of his generation, but the minute that he started making songs like ‘Daughters,’ his lyrics were enough to make anyone’s skin crawl. So how was that same guy the one to make one of the most thoughtful singer-songwriter records of the era as well?

While it’s easy to talk up Mayer’s guitar skills, songs like ‘Stop This Train’ and ‘Gravity’ are beautiful pieces of pop music with some of the best choruses of the era. And it’s not like he didn’t have some fantastic chops to go around, from Pino Palladino delivering a clinic on how to play bass to rock songs to Mayer somehow managing to get away with covering Jimi Hendrix on his version of ‘Bold As Love.’

And considering where he’s gone since this record, Mayer seemed content to put his artistry before any of the external drama for a while. Plenty of ink has been spilt about how much of an asshole he could be at times, but if this is the person hidden underneath all of that douchey demeanour, perhaps we misjudged him ever so slightly.

RAM – Paul McCartney

Given the reputation of The Beatles, fans seemed to have certain expectations before any of the band members made their solo outings. Everyone figured that they should be blown out of the water once they splintered off into their own lanes, but all of them were still fairly wounded by having to lose their best friends. Although George Harrison proved why he was one of the best songwriters in the band on his solo debut, Paul McCartney managed to get flak for RAM because of how off-kilter it sounded.

Especially coming from the perfectionist of the group, hearing this album was a definite surprise for fans, now hearing him make strange epics like ‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’ and ‘Dear Boy.’ If they managed to take Macca’s standards out of the equation, this is actually one of the forward-thinking albums any solo Beatle ever released, eventually being the springboard for other artists who wanted to make songs that sounded a bit more ramshackle than before.

Even if Macca ran away from this album to form Wings afterwards, any song on this record could have been a hit had it been released a few decades later. ‘The Cute Beatle’ might not have been the ideal person many people had in mind to give us this kind of sound, but it’s impossible to look someone in the eye and say that something like ‘The Back Seat of My Car’ isn’t moving.