What has been your biggest album disappointment?

Bruce Springsteen - The River.
Giant disappointment after Darkness On The Edge Of Town (and all that had come before).

 

Vine revived "Hollaback Girl". Those fails gave it a new life and meaning.

 

Scott Walker _ Tilt.

Sgt. Pepper? Gimme a break. Maybe not the best, but give the boys credit for creativity and willingness to try something no one had ever tried before! Bravo!

 

Just the stupid title of that record would have sent me running.

 

Rush, Snakes and Arrows and Clockwork Angels. They were both supposedly a return-to-form following unmemorable albums (Test For Echo in the first case, Snakes and Arrows in the second). Rush still hasn't returned to form, in the studio, at least. They still are great live.

 

The Wedding Album from John Lennon & Yoko Ono. Bought it the day I saw it in the store (original release date) got it home and looked at all the ephemera--which was cool, very elaborate for the time. Couldn't find the second album in the box...seriously? There's all this "stuff" and just one actual LP? OK, on with the show. I was ok with Side Two with the interviews & song snippets, but kept wondering when Side One was going to get past "John?" "Yoko?" *

For those not familiar with "John & Yoko", it takes up the entire first side of the album and it is J&Y repeating each other's names repeatedly.

 

Please stop listing some of my favorite albums. Thanks.

 

Devin the Dude "Landing Gear", after Waitin' to Inhale it was a big letdown. hence the title, i guess

 

90125 by Yes. Until then, I loved everything they did even when Anderson and Wakeman left.

I attribute this to the addition of Trevor Rabin and subtraction of Steve Howe. For me, Rabin resembles more of a hard rock guitarist who had tendencies in his style to play heavy metal riffs. Steve Vai, for me, is a close comparison.

I also didn't like the production work as evidenced by the a cappella harmonies that sound very artificial and less natural like in the albums from the 70's. Furthermore, I didn't care for some of the new technology they adapted.

The sound, on this album, is more straight rock and less prog rock.

 

Pink Floyd
- The Final Cut

After the epic "The Wall", I remember anticipating the follow-up. But I was unaware they were imploding.

 

Sacrilege, good sir!

 

Metallica: Load

 

I post this with fear of my life, but here goes:

Beach Boys - Pet Sounds. It had a massive reputation, influenced SgtPepper, I love "Good Vibrations" (contemporary of the album), so was expecting to be blown away. Sure, some of the tracks are good, but not a consistently great album.

PinkFloyd - Wish You Were Here. I was a huge lover of all Floyd's previous albums, and especially Dark Side of the Moon - particularly loved the layered arrangements and full sound. Wish You, in comparison, sounded empty. Loved "Have a Cigar", but "Shine On" felt undeveloped and drawn out - as if the band ran out of ideas and needed to pad out the album to fit two sides. My love affair with Floyd ended at that point; I tried to give them more chances

I've tried many times to reconsider and to re-engage with these albums, but I can't. Sorry.

 

Grace Under Pressure - Rush

Having loved Signals and everything that came before it, when I heard this album I was crushed. A stylistic shift, new producer, lousy production values, and very little lead guitar. For me Rush had jumped the shark, IMO they never recovered, and the classic era slammed shut, like a curtain falling on Neil's dopey bow tie. I still have yet to fully recover...................

 

Speaking of sacrilege...

Maybe Tunnel of Love. After BITUSA....

 

Tunnel of Love. Great title cut, two other good songs. Just so boring.............either great lyrics in boring melodies or blah lyrics wasted on good melodies
Spare Parts did, however, turn out to be a killer live song.

What follows will be 20 people who will say Tunnel of Love is one of the greatest albums in their collection.

 

Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse of Reason: a few decent tracks but overall a very weak album. Had it been released as a David Gilmour solo album I suspect it would have bombed.
The Who - Endless Wire: snoozefest with no memorable melodies, riffs or tunes.
Page and Plant - Walking Into Clarksdale: see Endless Wire comments.
Prince - The 1992 "symbol" album. I wasn't a huge fan of the previous few albums but this was the first that made me think he'd really lost the plot. Unfortunately he never really regained it...

 

Springsteen Live Box. After hearing the magic of his live bootlegs, particularly those from 1973-78, and hoping to hear them in their pristine, first generation, digital glory, what we got were post- Born in the USA arena rock versions, pointedly from the post-Landau era. It was good, but could have been so much better in light of what's in the vault.

 

Albums in this thread that I love:

• R.E.M - Green
• Talking Heads - Naked
• Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul
• Bruce Springsteen - The River
• Scott Walker - Tilt
• Pink Floyd - The Final Cut
• Prince - Symbol

 

Aerosmith - Permanent Vacation

Having adapted to Done With Mirrors, with it's boomy production values, I still felt there were some solid songs on the album. Not as good as Rock In A Hard Place, the previous album, but still decent. Then the full blown sellout called Permanent Vacation. Horrible. First single: Dude Looks Like A Lady. Rubbish. Second single: Rag Doll. Crappola. Third single: Angel. The worst song ever recorded by them. Until.....Don't Want To Miss A Thing from the Armageddon soundtrack. The rest of PV....the worst. Only redeeming song: A cover of The Beatles "I'm Down. And so the trend continued, they made big bucks on bad songs and I jumped ship.

 

Television - Adventure--the only time I've ever gotten angry with an album.
My Bloody Valentine - mbv
Mastodon - The Hunter

 

Bowie - Let's Dance
After the incredible run from Station to Station to Scary Monsters...this.
With this record, Bowie finally sounded like everybody else. That's not a good thing.

 

Three albums come to mind and they are …

The Doobie Brothers - "One Step Closer" (I know that there are not many fans of the "Michael McDonald" version of this band, but believe me, he spared them an earlier death and some of their biggest hits! The song "Real Love" was released on single in what seemed like a year before the album ever made it to store shelves. I enjoyed most of the "Takin' It To The Streets" album and truly love most of "Livin' On The Fault Line" and "Minute By Minute", but I found the long wait for "One Step Closer" was in vain, as I (and I'm sure most of America), had moved on from the band, by the time this last one came out. Looking back, it really is a bit of a rip-off of an album and is full of second rate tracks, in my opinion. In other words, it was time to call this band out for jumping the shark.)

Gino Vannelli - "Twisted Heart" (This was to be the follow-up to Gino's first "Arista" album, "Nightwalker", which was a fairly solid album. One single was released "The Longer You Wait" b/w a bland instrumental called "Bandito". Rumor has it that Gino wanted to go a bit harder, but label knuckle-"head" Clive Davis had other plans after hearing the tracks that Gino turned in and that was to tell him to go back and record the song "Even The Nights Are Better" (later a huge hit for Arista labelmates, "Air Supply"). Gino refused, so Clive vetoed releasing the album, thus causing Gino a huge contractual problem, which eventually stopped his career cold for a few years and forcing him to buy his tapes for the album back from Arista, which rumorly was a small fortune, but he did it, all the same. The album is still a very sore spot when talking with Gino and I don't believe that anything else outside of that original single, has ever made it out officially, which was a HUGE disappointment for this Gino Vannelli fan!)

and finally, the king of disappointments …

Donald Fagen's "Kamikiracrap" (or whatever that album is called?) (I get it, this album has it's fans and I will admit to liking a few of the cuts, especially "Tomorrow's Girls" and the b-side "Confide In Me", but otherwise, this album was a total bust for me, after the first note to last note brilliance of "The Nightfly". I never got into whatever "vision" Donald was trying to sell with this album and I doubt that I ever will, no matter how many times I go back and try. I just wanted either more "Nightfly" type songs or "Aja" type songs and nothing on this album speaks any of that sound to me, so it was (and remains), a huge disappointment.)