Five albums that disgusted the bands who made them
Anyone should feel proud when they walk out of the studio with an album. There might be a few compromises along the way that they have to deal with, but the idea of actually having an album of original material is the kind of thing that many lesser bands only dream of but never actually manage to flesh out. But when people like Stevie Nicks have many albums under their belt, there are bound to be some that sound much worse than others along the way.
But there’s a difference between someone looking back on an album with disdain rather than boredom. A band like Metallica may have songs on their Load trilogy that they weren’t overly fond of, but that’s not what we’re looking for. Whereas most people would listen to a song with pride, this is the kind of sensation that makes people want to take their records and break every single one of them.
Then again, that might come from something more than simply having no good songs. There could be a lot of potential on the records in question, but if they are weighed down by crappy production, horrible performances, or someone who is muddying up the whole thing, it’s hard to look back on the whole thing lovingly. Everyone signed up to make an album they could be proud of, but then it slowly became a chore after a while.
So, despite all of the hard work put into every project, these albums are the best cases for the idea that not everything can be a winner. It might be far from the worst thing in the world by the fans’ standards, but when you look at the kind of bar the artist set for themselves, it’s hard for them to look back on the lesser-ran albums in their catalogue and not get a bad taste in their mouth.
Five albums that disgusted the artists who made them”
<em>Katy Lied – </em>Steely Dan
There are always going to be moments where some bands miss the mark on their albums. Some pieces may have gone wrong from time to time, but in the case of Steely Dan, they always managed to make pristine records that no other band could even hope to touch half the time. So when they fell short of the standard they set for themselves, it was about more than coughing it up in the studio; this was a direct insult to the fans that needed to be dealt with properly.
Although Katy Lied is simply another great helping of jazzy pop tunes from Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the original mix of this record completely ruined the mixes in their mind. There had been moments where they could have easily gone in and fixed everything, but since the album was ready to go, the duo made sure to include a statement in the liner notes apologising for how terrible the mixing was on the final record. It’s hardly unlistenable by modern recording standards, but it feels like an album like Aja was made with such perfection that it felt like a course correction for their previous sins.
<em>Pop – </em>U2
It truly felt like U2 were untouchable by the time they reached the late 1990s. No band of their calibre had managed to survive the start of the 1990s, but by embracing some of the textures of electronic music, they seemed to fit right in amid the alternative revolution that was slowly taking over the world. But there’s a limit to all kinds of experimentation, and if Zooropa was the line, Pop was the moment Bono admitted that they went past the point of no return a little bit.
Although All That You Can’t Leave Behind was a nice recovery back to the old U2 sound, hearing the band bathed in glitchy synthesisers is what happens when they listen to too much of bands like the Chemical Brothers. And whereas Bono’s voice sounded like the one shred of humanity throughout the other records, this one feels like he’s either a glitch in the matrix or muffled by the layers of distortion around him. There are pieces of the album that could work in the right context, but it’s nice to see that U2 did eventually admit to their wrongdoing.
<em>Street Angel – </em>Stevie Nicks
Stevie Nicks had to do the impossible when balancing Fleetwood Mac and her solo career. The kind of pressure that comes with operating both of those jobs would have been enough for anyone to pull their hair out, but up until Lindsey Buckingham’s violent exit from the group, it felt like everything was running smoothly for them throughout most of the 1980s. But when Nicks left the confines of her old band in the early 1990s, Street Angel was the first sign that something was going wrong.
After kicking cocaine for a while, Nicks had built up an intense addiction to prescription drugs, which made her grow to loathe this period of her life. The album does have some decent features on it, like her cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Just Like A Woman’, but the rest of the album doesn’t nearly rise to the same levels that people loved when they heard records like Bella Donna. The old version of Nicks was in there somewhere, but the fact that she could barely break out that mystical version of herself was everyone’s first clue that things were going wrong.
<em>Nevermind – </em>Nirvana
Success should be the number-one objective that everyone strives for when making a record. Anyone can make something thinking that their friends would be happy to hear it, but once the big crowds come in and a band starts graduating from small clubs to small arenas, that’s usually cause for celebration. But once Kurt Cobain discovered what Nevermind meant to legions of fans, he was far from happy for what it did. If anything, he wanted to make sure to downplay every single piece of his musical identity.
He had already had trouble with the mixing issues on the record, but since millions of people latched onto ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, he felt embarrassed knowing that the album was a watered-down version of what he wanted it to be. Even during live performances, you can hear Cobain not wanting to be there, even twisting ‘Come As You Are’ on a few occasions to sound as discordant as possible. That didn’t stop fans from loving their songs when they came on the radio, but given how many people didn’t get what the band were going for, it’s no surprise that Cobain wanted such a drastic turn when making In Utero.
<em>Sgt Peppers – </em>The Beatles
There was always a big question hanging in the air as to where The Beatles could go after giving up the road. No other rock band had decided to stop playing concerts, but since Beatlemania had grown too big, it was only a matter of time before they wanted off the touring circuit for good. And while John Lennon was the first to suggest making something a bit more strange, he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Paul McCartney taking the reins on Sgt Peppers.
While the album is rightfully celebrated as a turning point in popular music, Lennon always felt that the record was the one instance in which he felt stifled creatively. His songs are still among the highlights, but outside of works like ‘A Day in the Life’, Lennon was convinced that most of his tracks were garbage, coupled with McCartney’s ‘granny music’ songs that he despised like ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ and ‘Lovely Rita’. It’s hard to take Lennon at his word since he badmouthed so many Fab albums, but if he thought that Sgt Pepper was never cohesive, could you imagine what kind of masterpiece we would be in for had it been up to his standards?
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