The 10 most frustrating albums to listen to

Pop – U2

U2 have always been a bit of an odd case in rock and roll. Despite them being one of the greatest bands to ever walk the Earth, there are very few artists that have been both loved and reviled as much as Bono, whether that’s for his preachiness or his insistence on treating every move he makes like it’s the most important step an artist can take. He always made up for it when the records sounded fantastic, but the minute they started to take themselves too seriously, why did they suddenly decide to take their musical foot off the gas in the middle of everything?

The Irish legends were at least taking some chances when making Zooropa, but the majority of Pop feels like an extremely flawed experiment. The blend of rock and roll and electronics was already hitting its stride, and aside from the few tracks that sound like passable imitations of what The Chemical Brothers were doing, a lot of Bono’s ideas on this only come off as a less satirical take on the Village People outfits that they are seen wearing in the video for ‘Discotheque’.

What’s most frustrating is the fact that there is a good album buried somewhere in here. The band were crying and screaming to get out of this digitised prison half the time, and given that the band reconvened one album later, it was much easier to ignore this. Because after a record like this, a song like ‘Stuck In a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of’ almost feels like a half-hearted apology.

The Red Album – Weezer

Every Weezer fan has had to deal with the harsh game of musical roulette when it comes to their favourite band. Some of their 2000s work is fairly decent and continues to be a good time capsule of their sound, but other times there will be songs like ‘Can’t Stop Partying’ where Rivers Cuomo seemed to forget everything that made him good in the first place. But on the generous scale that most people grade them on, The Red Album fits somewhere in the middle as one of their most lopsided projects.

But, honestly, the album doesn’t have a problem with being experimental. In fact, when it shoots for the fences like on the Cuomo-less songs like ‘Thought I Knew’ and ‘Cold Dark World’, it sounds pretty good, but to get to that point, it means having to sit through some strange detours like ‘Everybody Get Dangerous’ or the cringy bars that Cuomo demands to spit at the beginning of ‘Troublemaker’.

It might be worth it if it means gifting us something as gloriously weird as ‘The Greatest Man That Ever Lived’ or the atmospheric closer ‘The Angel and the One’, but as it stands, the whole thing feels like two different albums that were smashed on top of each other to sound finished. There are some great highs to be found amongst the track listing here, but it’s also the musical equivalent of walking through a dog park sometimes. It can be a lot of fun, but you have to be careful of potentially stepping in shit.

Crown Royal – Run-DMC

The new millennium was a glorious time for artists that hadn’t had hits in a while. Although the late 1990s had already started bringing back legends like Santana and even Aerosmith back into the mainstream, some of the heavyhitters in hip-hop were either changing with the times or they were moving on with their lives after the hits started drying up. But still, was anyone really thinking that any type of media shift or trends were going to dethrone the resident kings of rock and hip-hop?

Sure, Run-DMC weren’t having hits by then, but nu-metal bands galore had cited them as an influence, so it was at least possible for them to see a few more hits. Then again, the version of the band that turned up on Crown Royal is a much different beast from the ones who gave us ‘It’s Tricky’. Jam Master Jay’s touch behind the beat is as smooth as ever, but Run has seemed to trade in his usual braggadocio for a Jay-Z style flow, which works great when playing off people like Nas but sounds a lot more uncomfortable next to rockers like Everlast and Sugar Ray.

And DMC? Well, I’d be glad to tell you what he did if he bothered to show up, because all of the record is missing him or features bars that he spit a decade prior. Although this ultimately became the band’s swan song after Jay was tragically shot in 2002, Crown Royal feels less like a triumphant return than a cashgrab half the time. Everyone loved the idea of a new Run-DMC album, but if one of the core members doesn’t bother going to the studio, there’s bound to be some problems.

A Farewell to Kings – Rush

By the end of the album 2112, Rush had officially entered their prog-genius period. The entire band had completed the Olympian task of getting their album to sell despite going against their label’s wishes, and for the time being, they were given the freedom to make whatever they wanted since they had earned their cult-like fanbase. But while A Farewell to Kings is a fantastic record for what it was, it’s usually a lot better when an album has a definitive ending to it once everything’s over.

Because, yes, a lot of the songs on here are among the band’s finest like ‘Xanadu’ and the poppy single ‘Closer to the Heart’, but the ending of the album leaves a lot to be desired. Oh, not in terms of ‘Cygnus X1’. No, that’s a great song, and the story of a man getting sucked into a black hole is perfect fodder for a prog reimagining. It’s just a shame that it cuts off into nothingness as soon as the song starts going.

If anyone follows Rush’s lore regarding their albums, a lot of the questions about this song are answered in the lead-off track into their next album, Hemispheres. It’s definitely a neat idea in concept, but in execution, there should have been some explanation about where both these songs are going or even a motif that connects both of them. While a double album may have been out of the question during that time, there’s no reason to let your audience hear one goddamn song.

Rock ‘n’ Roll – John Lennon

John Lennon was never meant to make albums purely out of obligation. Although the other Beatles would get tied up in various label disputes and put out records that weren’t exactly the most heartfelt thing in the world, Lennon always said things with his chest, and he would be dead in the ground before he started making songs that were meant to appease the meat market again. He had gone through that patch of his career, but Rock ‘n’ Roll gave us a glimpse into that sad reality for one album.

Lennon may have only been using this to get out of his legal trouble from ‘Come Together’, but the most disheartening part of the album has less to do with the songs themselves. In fact, Lennon doing a covers album was exactly what he needed to get those creative juices flowing, but since this was the middle of his “lost weekend”, you can hear Lennon not taking care of himself through most of the takes, almost like he’s waiting for an excuse to hit the town and play up his reputation as one of the greatest artists that the world had ever known.

The former Beatle would remember this album as utter hell to get going, and though a lot of the songs can be fun, you can’t help but feel a little bit sad listening to him here. Sure, there was a smile on his face and he seemed to be having fun every time he played with his friends, but underneath all of that was a lonely man who had to still deal with the fact that he was separated from the love of his life.

Emancipation – Prince

The entire road to Prince getting out of his deal with Warner Bros feels like the ultimate redemption story. The whole process of getting through that legal red tape would be any other musician’s nightmare, but after years trapped in development, ‘The Purple One’ was finally able to make music on his terms and go back to using his name rather than going by the symbol all the time. So, in theory, Emancipation should feel like a victory lap. And then you keep listening to it. And keep listening to it. And keep listening to it.

For as much as Prince may have wanted to make the best music he could at this point, Emancipation is far too long for anyone to care that much. It’s easy to understand why he released the whole thing in spectacular fashion, but if fans already have a hard time listening to albums that are over an hour, making three full hours of music for a single release is either the work of a genius or a madman, which are both qualifiers that really suit Prince at this time.

What’s even crazier is that there are still albums’ worth of songs in Prince’s vault that have never seen the light of day and probably won’t ever be released. This is easily one of the most extravagant track listings that any artist has come out with from one of their albums, but if you look back at all of the sessions from this record, we might be dealing with an incomplete number of tunes here.

Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) – Tom Petty

By the late 1980s, it felt like nothing could break Tom Petty. He had already dealt with cocaine addiction, a few lacklustre albums and breaking his hand during the making of Southern Accents, but even after someone tried to kill him by setting his house on fire, he always rose like a phoenix from the ashes. So while Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) should feel like a small victory after going through all that hardship, Petty came out with an album while still licking a few of his wounds.

While it’s far from uninspired, there are many songs on the project that feel like the band are playing them on the spot for the first time. Which actually might not be that far from the truth, considering the Heartbreakers had become so tight that Petty could throw any tune at them and have most of the track memorised within the first pass. That might make for a rootsy record, but Petty has the same problem that a lot of bands do with this album: it’s lopsided as all hell.

There are great moments where he seems to be getting back to his garage roots, but in between those are tunes that feel like fully-fleshed out 1980s ballads, like the sweeping synthesisers on ‘Runaway Trains’ or the pure power-pop swagger of a song like ‘All Mixed Up’. Neither side of the record is any better or worse than the other, but for someone that was known for setting a tone with each of his records, Let Me Up is the first time Petty’s tunes have felt decidedly schizophrenic.

Somewhere in England – George Harrison

Not every artist has the luxury of doing what they want whenever they go into the studio. The label beast needs to be fed somehow, and there’s a good chance that it doesn’t like to eat material that is completely from the heart every time he comes for a visit. But for someone like George Harrison who relied on his personal spirituality to guide him through his life, Somewhere in England is the first time that any Beatle was told that they could do wrong.

Harrison already had the makings of a good record here, but when his label heard it, their demand for him to go back to the drawing board was the last thing he wanted to hear. He had the whole thing finished with some decent hits on it, but after going back to the drawing board, his new additions were an extremely mixed bag, including the fantastic John Lennon tribute ‘All Those Years Ago’ and balancing that out with cynical songs like ‘Blood From A Clone’.

So while the first album is what Harrison originally intended to put out, it’s hard to really gauge what the best way to listen to this album is. Because do you take Harrison’s initial vision and lose songs like ‘All Those Years Ago’ in the process, or do you settle for the stellar single that tied the record together but had worse songs across the rest of the record?

Encore – Eminem

The worst enemy of any major artist in the 2000s was album leaks. Napster was rising to prominence around the turn of the millennium, and no matter how hard Lars Ulrich tried to stop it, the idea of someone getting access to albums before they were out only took money out of the artist’s pockets half the time. It makes sense that Eminem would see this as a personal affront, but the fact that he would throw all semblance of quality out the window is what makes Encore one of the biggest derailments in his career.

Because the record he was originally going to release felt like it was going to capitalise on everything that The Eminem Show promised. There were songs targeting bullies and had Slim Shady going in on President Bush, but as Em heard the leaks, he decided to leave a lot of tunes off the record and start throwing anything at the wall, meaning that great songs like ‘Never Enough’ are put next to tracks that are downright annoying to listen to like ‘Big Weenie’ or ‘Puke’.

Which is strange because Eminem is someone who relies on frustration and anger to make some of his best stuff. If anyone were to mess with his creative process, you’d think he’d break out the fangs, but having him deliberately stifle himself and make a bunch of schoolyard taunts into the length of an album is either him being delusional about what his fans want or one of the biggest trolls in music history.

Lulu – Lou Reed and Metallica

Any great collaboration album in rock music is never exactly fair. The idea of a supergroup already bestows a mantle of pressure that no band needs to have on their back, and while Traveling Wilburys managed to carry everything alright, there’s only so many times that can happen before people are stuck with bands like Damn Yankees. But for a brief second, it actually felt like Lou Reed teaming up with Metallica had the potential to work.

For one thing, Reed was responsible for making guttural rock and roll in The Velvet Underground, so giving him an actual metal band to back him should have been a slam dunk. But since Reed had spent most of his time in the world of avant-garde at this point in his career, what we’re left with is an album that ultimately pleases only a select few, with most of Reed’s fanbase not liking the jagged metal riffs and the metalheads hating this random guy spewing spoken-word poetry over everything.

Even if the whole thing was entirely misguided, though, it feels like there were still the makings of a great record in here that somehow didn’t quite come together. Either Metallica or Lou Reed working on a concept album based around the play Lulu would have made for something interesting, but given how both Reed and Metallica stood by their creation, it’s not like they have any regrets with experimenting.