Most underrated Rolling Stones album?

Bigger Bang should have been a monster album, the songs and the guitar licks on it are great. But it was so horribly produced it is nearly unlistenable.

 

Yes and quite often the songs will have a great chorus, or a great hook in the verse, or some great guitar licks...but not much else in the rest of the song. Maybe a little bit (or a lot) of judicious editing could have produced a much better album.

Just an opinion.

 

I thought everything about it is perfect except the post production which squashed the life out of it and sent it into irritating distortion.
Had those songs been mixed and mastered like Black and Blue it would have been one killer album.

 

I agree with the production, but I do honestly think that if they had have carefully turned roughly 12 songs into 6 - to go with the 4 or 5 that are just fine - then they would have a killer 10-11 song album, that goes for around 40 minutes.

In my opinion, Voodoo Lounge has about 5 songs too many as well...but it's a much better album.

 

You could be right, but it is really hard to tell with the low fidelity quality of the release. The weakest songs on the album might sound killer in high fidelity.

 

To me, the best songs on the album are, "Let Me Down Slow", "Back Of My Hand" and "Biggest Mistake". The rest of it is full of some really catchy melodies, some nice guitar licks and some verses with really good hooks. Unfortunately, they're spread too thinly across the remaining 13 songs. If they had have been spread across only 7 or 8 songs instead, well.....

 

"Black and Blue". I'm one of those who just loves albums that are not hallmarks of a career, but just have a crisp sound and guitar work that does not sound buffered or polished. Just clean phrasing , great changes, and strong fills. "Hand of Fate" is one of my favorites. The fact that Wayne Perkins is on a lot of this one (sometimes called the new guitar player auditions), it's just very unique. HOF sounds different than anything they have done. Over the years Mick and Keef have been intentionally cagey about who played on what track. HOF is pure Perkins. And he would have gotten the gig were it not for that last Faces Tour imploding, and then Keef preferring a mate as opposed to a polished session pro from the South.

 

Yeppers. Thank you Wayne Perkins.

 

Steel Wheels

 

To me Stones albums almost without exception have their share of filler. That's one big thing that separates the Beatles and Stones -- not that the Fabs didn't have their weak cuts too. Bigger Bang is special to me in that it came so late in the game and was better than it had to be.

 

Well said Sir(s)!

 

Tattoo You. Minus the overplayed "Start Me Up" it is a fantastic album.

 

Their Satanic Majesties Request, for me. Great, great songs. 2000 man, She's a Rainbow, all great. Never played on the radio.

 

Cant beat Jaggers voice on that early early stuff can you? Sure, it wasnt really "Stones" as far as songs go, but noone sounded hungrier and leaner than these guys than on those first couple of albums. Yet most of the public having only the GHs albums know very little of this material.

 

Great to see Emotional Rescue and Black & Blue getting some love, but I would add Undercover to the mix. The second to last album with Bill and, for me, their last truly good studio album.

 

Third to last (Dirty Work & Steel Wheels followed...)

 

Are Black and Blue or Voodoo Lounge underrated? If so, those.

Oh, and the very first album. Is that underrated? Might be my favorite Stones record of all time. I ask if they're underrated because outside of the quartet of Let It Bleed to Exile, and Some Girls, I'm not really aware of which albums are rated higher than others by Stones fans.

 

Goat's Head Soup
Emotional Rescue
Undercover
Side 2 of Tattoo You.
Side 2 of Steel Wheels

 

Between the Buttons

 

Another vote for Bridges here, at least as their most underrated ' modern-day' album...

 

Emotional Rescue is FAR from their worst LP. The only tracks I tend to skip are "Indian Girl" and "All About You," but even those have grown on me. I've loved it since 1980 and I think it's only improved with age.

 

Ultimate Classic Rock ranked the Stones albums.

The top 12 (in order) were Exile, Let it bleed, Sticky Fingers, Beggars Banquet, Some Girls, Between the Buttons, Aftermath, Out of our heads, Rolling Stones Now, England's Newest Hitmakers, Goats Head Soup, and Tattoo You.

There is a separate thread on this.

My vote for most underated would therefore go to Tattoo You. It's the first of the 24 or so studio albums I would have placed higher than it is. For me it would be up there in the top 6 with Some Girls after the classic top 4.

 

With very very few exceptions, I think the ideal length for an album is 40-45 minutes. The CD era has largely reduced the ability for artists to put out a consistently great piece of work as an album.

 

It's only rock n roll...."Time waits for no one" is a great and almost unknown song. "Fingerprint file" sounds like nothing they've done before and very dark. "if you really want to be my friend" is a nice song too. An album to listen on a cloudy and cold afternoon.