<em>Two Virgins – </em>John Lennon/Yoko Ono

The Beatles never said they were perfect whenever they made their classic albums. There were certainly moments that were much more entertaining than others, but as The White Album sessions ended, it was clear that the Fabs needed to spread their wings and see what else was out there other than playing together. They weren’t heading towards a musical divorce yet, but John Lennon’s wilderness period had fans appalled once they looked at the cover of Two Virgins.

While beauty is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to most album covers, Lennon’s decision to pose with Yoko Ono completely naked caused a stir before the music was played. Lennon had always been the adventurous Beatle willing to try out new avenues in art and music, but having this be the way to introduce Yoko Ono into his creative life was far from the safest move, especially when the album unfolded and featured the most discordant noise ever conceived.

Although Yoko Ono does have some fantastic music in her catalogue and is worthy of being treated as a revolutionary artist in her own right, all this served to do was make fans wonder what kind of stuff Lennon was smoking to think that this was a great idea. As much as this might have been a strange experiment for the time, most fans didn’t realise that a Beatle could fall from grace with something this abrasive.

<em>Rock in a Hard Place – </em>Aerosmith

All great rock and roll bands thrive on the chemistry between two heavy hitters in the group. Everyone will be focused on how John Lennon and Paul McCartney played off each other in The Beatles, and as much as they hated each other, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks always had an innate chemistry whenever they sang together in Fleetwood Mac. While Aerosmith definitely had that rub between Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, no one realised how important it was until that secret ingredient was gone.

While Perry was halfway out the door during Night in the Ruts, fans were at least willing to stomach an album that had only half of the band’s swagger on it. But when Brad Whitford left and they recruited Jimmy Crespo and Rick Dufay, the band were a shell of their former selves, which didn’t help matters when Tyler’s lyricism dried up, leaving them to resort to covers and some of the most lacklustre singles of their career like ‘Lightning Strikes’.

Perry was impressed enough to play along with some of the tunes later in Aerosmith’s career, but there was no point in thinking that this version would take over the world all over again. Because, really, Night in the Ruts was the big divorce album between Tyler and Perry, and judging by how deflated Tyler sounds here, he seemed to miss his musical soulmate now more than ever.

<em>Chinese Democracy – </em>Guns N’ Roses

Every artist knows the importance of keeping a certain distance between album releases. After all, distance makes the heart grow fonder, and if people keep following up their next record with something else, it gives the fans no time to miss you. That means that a few years need to go by before everything is back in action, but Axl Rose seemed to take that wait time to heart a bit too much when making Chinese Democracy.

Then again, a lot of that time waiting also meant Rose having to reassemble the band. No one in Guns N’ Roses was going along with his game anymore, and that made for a record featuring a round robin of every guitarist that he could find to replace Slash, whether that was Buckethead, Bumblefoot, or Robin Finck making their way to the studio. But before the album was leaked to radio stations, fans were already pissed to know that Rose had spent this much time on what would have been a decent third Guns N’ Roses record.

That’s not to say that Chinese Democracy is all that bad. Songs like ‘This I Love’ and ‘Shackler’s Revenge’ have the makings of great tunes hiding somewhere inside them, but considering Rose spent more than most people’s life savings to make it, it was bound to earn a spot on this list. Because if someone spent that much money and resulted in something that was simply passable, it’s enough to make the most casual fan want to pull their hair out.

<em>Load – </em>Metallica

Any casual music fan can take their pick of which album by Metallica pissed off fans the most without even looking that hard. Throughout their history, the thrash legends have had plenty of people calling for their heads for every reason in the book, whether that was selling out on The Black Album, making unlistenable trash on St Anger, or having the gall to use an acoustic guitar as far back as Ride the Lightning. But of all the things to be mad at them for, a trip to the barber may have been the strangest.

Right when Metallica were prepping their follow-up to The Black Album, fans were appalled to see the first press photos of them with short hair. While Jason Newsted had already cut off his hair midway through their last tour, seeing them donning gothic makeup and dressing like California cowboys was too much for people to take, especially when they heard of the album and found out that they had changed their sound to gear towards the alternative crowd.

Then again, it’s not all that different from what Metallica had been doing before. While there’s nothing on the level of ‘Enter Sandman’ or ‘Sad But True’ on Load, it’s a decent helping of hard rock from a band that was dangerously close to sounding like a boilerplate version of heavy metal. A change like this was necessary, but it turned out that fans didn’t want to see the heavy metal answer to bands like The Cure.

<em>Father of All… – </em>Green Day

In a world full of punk elitists, Green Day proved that a band can do whatever they want as long as it’s on their own terms. Their trilogy of albums may have seen them in one of the darkest chapters of their career, but Revolution Radio put them back on the right track and even gave them some decent-sized hits that could stand toe-to-toe with ‘Basket Case’ and ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’. But the reason why Father of All… lands on this list almost has nothing to do with the band. It all has to do with one billboard marketing the entire project.

There had already been some questions around the band defacing the iconic American Idiot cover shot with a unicorn for the new album, but the banner selling the record made for one of the cringiest rollouts in rock history. Boasting that the album was pure rock and roll and featured no processed beats or Swedish songwriters, this made the pop-punk icons look like one of the most disgruntled dad rock acts that thought music was so much better back in their day.

Perhaps it was, but if someone is making that bold of a claim, they have to come correct, and since the album in question was the shortest they had ever released and contained songs that were carbon copies of their old material, it’s not like the band were reinventing the wheel. They had come to play with the attitude of a band ready for war, but listening to the record in isolation, they sounded like they were on autopilot and begging to get out of their record contract.

<em>The Life of Pablo – </em>Kanye West

It’s easy for most people to wipe their hands of Kanye West today. If you look at any of the things that he has said within the past few years, it’s clear that he’s either not in a proper frame of mind or is making a deliberate attempt to make as many people angry as he can with the most grossly offensive statements possible. Although that can be heartbreaking for someone who grew up with his music, The Life of Pablo was one of the first times fans felt ripped off from a pure musical perspective.

There had been some questions about where West would go after Yeezus, but after going through one draft of the album after the next, fans seemed to expect a fireworks show. With features from Kendrick Lamar to Kid Cudi, this felt like the kind of once-in-a-generation rap album on the horizon, but when everyone listened to the final product, it seemed like a few pieces were missing. And for the first time, West agreed with the fanbase and returned to the drawing board.

When going through the record, West ended up releasing the rough mixes of many of the songs by accident, and when he finally did emerge with a reimagined version of the album later, fans at least got a more palettable version of the record, even if it still had some of the cringiest lines he would ever write. The Life of Pablo is far from West’s worst album, and it was at least interesting to see his creative process at work, but no fan picks up a new record only to be told by the artist that it’s not done.

<em>Dark Side of the Moon Redux – </em>Roger Waters

Some of the best albums ever made have graduated to the level of feeling like fine pieces of art. When looking back on the greatest music in rock and roll history, fans will still be listening to The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and The Beatles’ Sgt Peppers to see what’s possible in the realm of songwriting. And while Dark Side of the Moon deserves to be among that company, it does have an asterisk next to it when Roger Waters decided to take it out of the box and start messing around with it again.

Covering one’s own material isn’t always a bad move, but when Waters announced that he was going to make an updated version of Dark Side of the Moon, people were already sceptical. The album is perfect the way it is, but when Waters decided to replace the traditional prog-rock solos with spoken word sections about the state of the world, it felt like the fans were being invited to a musical lecture rather than a proper album.

And considering Richard Wright had long since passed following the album’s release, hearing his keyboard lines being replaced by syrupy muzak and the most lifeless performances Waters has ever given feels like a spit in the face to the original. The entire point of the album cover is to showcase all the different sides of the musical rainbow, so when covering songs that have become iconic, why the hell was it Waters’s first choice to make all of those colours look absolutely lifeless?

<em>HIStory – </em>Michael Jackson

A lot of Michael Jackson’s career in the late 1990s involved him doing damage control on his own career. Many people may have been diehard fans of him following Dangerous, but the minute that he started facing sexual assault allegations later on, people started to view ‘The King of Pop’ as this eccentric man who may have more of a dark streak than anyone realised. Jackson may have wanted to defend his innocence, but HIStory became one of his controversial releases for two reasons.

First of all, this is the most up-close and personal album Jackson has ever made. It has all the trappings that most would come to expect from one of his projects, but hearing him talk about his problems or try to go back to being innocent on ‘Scream’ and ‘Childhood’ only comes off as weird in the context of the record. But before anyone got ahold of the proper album, they had to sit through him reliving his glory days by getting the greatest hits album.

While the management may have tried to kill two birds with one stone, including HIStory as a package deal with his greatest hits album feels way too greedy for someone like Jackson, especially since most of his fanbase already had everything from Thriller to Bad to go back to. HIStory did give fans another helping of great music to listen to, but including a playlist of the greatest pop tunes ever written comes off as a little bit cowardly, as if Jackson needs to remind everyone why he was one of the most important stars of his generation.

<em>Highway 61 Revisited – </em>Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan never set out to please anyone when making his music. He only played his songs because he had a message to spread with his music, and listening to them, you’re hearing someone expressing themselves as purely as they can. It may have pissed people off to see him rocking some electric guitars on the back half of Bringing it All Back Home, but Highway 61 Revisited was where the line in the sand was drawn between Dylan and his old fanbase.

Every one of his fans had been used to ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’ and looked at rock and roll as a cheap version of music, so seeing their hero try to compete with the likes of The Beatles felt like him selling out to the masses. That argument may have held some water if the songs weren’t any good, but Dylan was on the cusp of something brilliant, turning ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and ‘Ballad of A Thin Man’ into some of the most caustic rock songs of the time and proving to everyone that pure poetry had a place on the charts.

There was a good contingency of people who would have rather had Dylan eradicated from the pop music sphere, but he wasn’t about to stop going against the grain. He had started life as a rebel going against the established order, and after he realised how confined he was in the folk-rock sphere, he knew that the only way forward was to turn his back on the people who helped him reach the top of the musical food chain.

<em>Songs of Innocence – </em>U2

It doesn’t take a particularly convincing argument for someone to hate U2. There have been plenty of times when Bono has been too pompous for his own good or has put his foot in his mouth for saying the wrong thing, which made him look like some self-righteous musical messiah. While the Irish legends have undoubtedly done more good than harm throughout their career, that didn’t stop every single Apple customer from being pissed when they got their new album.

Although U2 have prided themselves on being on the cutting edge of technology whenever they can, the idea of releasing their album Songs of Innocence to anyone with an iPhone was far from their finest moment. Many of U2’s albums are far from the worst thing in the world, but if any artist insists that their album be a part of the general public’s record collection, they shouldn’t be surprised when they start to get clapback from people who never asked for it in the first place.

But the real tragedy is the fact that Songs of Innocence is easily the best entry in their Songs of… series of albums, taking everything that they did on No Line on the Horizon and cutting the fat off it to make a genuinely earnest record. All the pieces for an excellent record were there, but it never had a fair shot since they hooked up with one of the biggest tech companies in the world and Big Brother-ed it onto everyone’s music library.