The 10 most over-the-top albums ever made
No band gets to where they are by only giving 95%. Even though it might be hard trying to get any album off the ground, any group is going to work mercilessly in the studio until they have something that they can call the greatest thing that they have ever produced. It can never be called easy, but once acts like The Stone Roses started to get ambitious, things spiralled out of control fast.
Then again, it’s hard for me not to commend groups for going above and beyond. As much as people like the idea of having their favourite bands stay grounded, the whole reason behind arena rock is to have anthems that can be belted to the rafters and make crowds of people jump the minute they hear the songs.
There is still merit to that approach, but these bands never had the right balance between their hooks and the window dressing behind their records. Whether it was the massive tracklists, the obnoxious amount of overdubbing, or the fact that the songs themselves weren’t very good to begin with, someone should have the sense to take a step back and realise that the material wasn’t up to snuff before everything got mastered.
But they arrived, regardless, and while some of them are spellbinding in exactly the right way, being over the top came back to bite every artist on this list in some form or another. Whether it was the ego getting to their heads or having access to the best studios in the world, this is when bands swing for the fences and end up burrowing themselves up their own ass.
The 10 most overblown albums ever made:
10. Sign O’ The Times – Prince
It would be an oxymoron to say that Prince was ever high off his own ego. As much as he claimed to be one of the greatest musicians to ever walk the Earth, he could usually back it up whenever he made records like Purple Rain or 1999. While the latter had already been an ambitious double album of material, Sign O’ The Times is the sound of Prince’s brain on fire midway through his creative hot streak.
Don’t let that dissuade you from the album, though. Throughout every second of this masterpiece, Prince teaches every musician how to balance the tone of whatever they might be working on. While some tunes might have more in common with James Brown and funk, there are moments where he can change on a dime and sound like The Beatles or write an all-time classic pop song like ‘I Could Never Take the Place Of Your Man’.
And while Emancipation might have a longer and more exhausting tracklist than Sign O the Times, that felt more like a mass exodus of material than any grand statement. This was Prince staking his claim as one of the greatest artists in the world, and while it can be more than a little bit flashy in places, it’s pretty hard to argue with him.
9. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – Smashing Pumpkins
In a world of post-modern irony, Billy Corgan seemed to be one of the few people who cared about his status as a rockstar. Compared to the cut-and-dry sound of Nevermind or Eddie Vedder brooding his way through many of Pearl Jam’s sets, an album like Siamese Dream was the moment where Corgan had free rein to make a 1970s AOR record with a cynical twist. Once that succeeded, though, it became a double-edged sword when we let him do whatever he wanted.
Although Mellon Collie stands as one of the hallmarks of Corgan’s catalogue, it’s hard to think of it without the bloated elements as well. While there are some justifiably great tunes on here like ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’ and ‘1979’, there are many that feel like they were made to stroke someone’s ego, like on ‘Porcelina of the Vast Oceans’, which goes on for over nine minutes.
And for a good example of why everything to overinflated, look at what Corgan thought he was able to do by trying to be Depeche Mode on the next album, Adore. The only reason that someone gets the ability to make an album that sleepy is when they have become virtually too big to fail.
8. S&M – Metallica
By the end of the 1990s, Metallica felt more like an institution than a band. Although they may have broken down the doors for what metal could be in the mainstream, it came at the cost of them looking less like seasoned badasses and more like everyone’s first introduction to what the genre could sound like. Since the Load era showed them getting more grandiose with each passing track, where’s the next highest place you can go? An orchestra, of course.
While the idea was inspired by Deep Purple’s various collaborations with orchestras, hearing the sounds of thrash metal and classical music coming together is one of the most inspired ideas that the group ever had. Despite not everything going over very well, hearing them use each section as its own instrument in the mix on tunes like ‘No Leaf Clover’ is a stroke of genius by conductor Michael Kamen.
For an idea that would have seemed unbelievably pretentious in lesser hands, Metallica managed to do their homework and come out with the kind of grandiose album that warrants the size and scope that it comes with. Besides, Cliff Burton was always into classical music during his time with the group, so this may as well have been their way of paying respect to their former friend and bandmate.
7. Speakerboxxx/the Love Below – Outkast
It’s hard for any artist to be on the same wavelength as their partner. The Everly Brothers notoriously were far from the best of friends throughout their time together, and even though Simon and Garfunkel created heavenly harmonies together, there’s a reason why Simon had the song power to keep his solo career rolling a lot steadier than Garfunkel’s. In Outkast’s case, they were growing apart by the day, and by Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, they didn’t even try to hide their ambitions.
Whereas most people would try to compromise their sound to make one album, this is both Andre 3000’s and Big Boi’s first solo albums folded in on each other. While there is an occasional verse from the other across each respective album, it’s hard to get a read on what tone they are going for when Big Boi’s braggadocious rap album and Andre trying his best to work in every genre he can.
Still, the fact that they could put out an album that functions as two separate projects should be commended on its own. Any artist that comes to the table with a feature-length album needs to be doing something right, but if it means having ‘The Way You Move’ and ‘Hey Ya’ under one roof, it was more than worth it.
6. Be Here Now – Oasis
Oasis didn’t need an album to convince them that they were the greatest band in the world. They had started as a young indie group on the small label as acts like Primal Scream, but the minute that they started selling in droves with What’s the Story Morning Glory, it felt like they had finally earned their self-given title of God’s gift to rockstars everywhere. Once you start believing it, though, things normally start to go awry.
Since Oasis music is what the people wanted, Noel Gallagher figured the one thing that would make it even better is more Oasis on every tune. Even though Be Here Now comes to play with some of the most overblown production imaginable, it’s a shame that there are only a handful of decent songs to show for it, especially when looking at how ‘Magic Pie’ earns its seven minutes of runtime with some of the dumbest lines to ever come out of the same man who wrote ‘Champagne Supernova’.
But where that song was oddly poetic in its nonsense, half of Be Here Now is what happens when you get a bunch of rich rock stars high off their faces and start giving them everything they want. It may have been far too big for anyone to knock them, but once they kissed the sky, the fall back down to Earth left a noticeable crater in its wake.
5. Music From the Elder – Kiss
It’s statistically impossible for any Kiss album not to be over the top. The entire premise of their stage show is about bringing a rock and roll circus to town, and even if they don’t have the best tunes to back them up, you can’t deny that they aren’t giving 110% whenever they don that black and white face paint. At the end of the day, it should be clean, dumb fun, but something went incredibly wrong when they had the gall to make their audience think too hard.
While The Wall had been a smash hit for producer Bob Ezrin around the same time, hearing him try to work his magic on a Kiss album feels wrong. That’s before getting into the album’s story, which involves Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley submitting songs about ‘The Chosen One’ and his neverending pursuit to find the meaning of life and the mythmaking that comes with being a rock and roll legend.
Why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah, because it’s the same kind of thing that every wannabe rockstar kid doodles in their notebook between classes. That’s not to say that the idea doesn’t have merit, but since none of them have the instrumental or songwriting chops to pull this kind of thing off, it comes off as pretentious at worst and dorky at best.
4. Notes on a Conditional Form – 1975
Any standard definition of the word ‘pretentiousness’ in the dictionary could easily be replaced with just two words: Matty Healy. While the man himself has admitted to being a bit too full of himself on occasion, it shouldn’t matter if the music The 1975 puts out still holds up. But what makes most bands great is their ability to say no, and if Notes on a Conditional Form is any indication, none of them know the meaning of that word.
Despite the group’s reputation for rambling on throughout their best albums, having a record filled with nearly 30 tracks is a tall order for anyone to ask of their audience. That’s before getting into the massive number of interludes on the project, which go on for the same amount of time it would take for a hardcore punk band to pump out a masterpiece.
Which is a shame because a few of the tunes on the record are still fairly good like them trying their hand at punk on ‘People’ or having a genuine moment amongst mates on ‘Guys’. Any overblown album can be a bit of a long sit, but it’s all the more disheartening hearing the phenomenal 40-minute cut of this album slowly drowning in a sea of interlude tracks. A bit of a wonder why they didn’t get sore wrists from all that musical masturbation.
3. Kilroy Was Here – Styx
Styx were never a band destined to be loved. Even when they were going through their renaissance period during the 1970s, half of the critics couldn’t get over the whininess blaring out of Dennis DeYoung’s mouth or the pseudo-progressive angle that came off more like a theatre kid putting on his first recital. Criticism can also be a good source of rocket fuel, though, and when DeYoung finally tried to show everyone how much of a rock god he was, Kilroy Was Here ended up being even more overblown than anyone could have thought.
Compared to other prog bands that eased synthesisers into their sound, DeYoung seemed to put every fibre of his being into the sound of technology, with ‘Mr Roboto’ still standing as one of the cheesiest hits of the 1980s. While the opening track does promise a bit of an adventure through some sort of cyberpunk world, good luck finding where the rest of the story is going for the rest of the album.
Because looking through the other guys’ songs, it looked like no one knew what the hell to do with all the flashy synths, leading to an album with a half-baked idea and some of the most unintentionally hilarious rock songs ever written like ‘Heavy Metal Poisoning’. A concept album might not have been the worst idea for them to tackle, but listening to each track, it starts to feel more and more like every parent’s interpretation of what a “dangerous” rock album is supposed to sound like.
2. Second Coming – The Stone Roses
One of the worst things that can happen to a band is to make a classic right out of the gate. Even though success is rarely a bad thing, no one knows how they will sound on their first outing, and when everyone responds with rapturous praise, it puts the weight of the world on their shoulders when they get back in the studio. While The Stone Roses were up to the challenge of creating another mammoth album, Second Coming was the moment all of England realised that too much time on one’s hands can be a recipe for disaster.
Because while there are pieces of the record that sound fantastic, it doesn’t need to drone on for as long as it does. Despite having some great guitar tracks spread across the album, John Squire seemed more interested in what great riff he could shoehorn into a song rather than whether it fit in with what the song was about.
Whereas most artists would use the five years The Roses spent to disappear up their own ass, Second Coming still sounds like they were trying, with ‘Love Spreads’ capturing the essence of what they could have done in a cool five minutes. That being said, most people shouldn’t have to comb through an entire 70+ minute album for only an EP’s worth of quality.
1. Use Your Illusion – Guns N’ Roses
By the time that Guns N’ Roses reached the top of the rock and roll world, Axl Rose was pissed. He had spent years trying to make it in Hollywood, and once Appetite for Destruction started taking off, the massive adulation they got made the group concerned that they would be living in the album’s shadow for the rest of their lives. If they were ever going to follow it up, Rose knew they needed to go big, but Use Your Illusion was enough to jump the shark three times over.
Whereas most double albums already have a bit of bloat to them, no one was asking for the gang to grow up this fast, especially when putting Appetite-quality songs like ‘Right Next Door to Hell’ next to sweeping ballads like ‘November Rain’. I almost don’t want to point the finger at the rest of the band since the lion’s share of the bloated moments come from Rose’s mammoth exercises on tracks like ‘Breakdown’ or being so bold as to make two different versions of ‘Don’t Cry’.
Seeing how far the group had tried to go in only five years, it’s no wonder they took so long to release Chinese Democracy. When something is this over the top, how the hell was anything going to able to top unless it was one of the most expensive music ever pressed to plastic?
