One Track Saves The Album?

No fair, Jim, you don't like Buddy Miles ! I have to add that Message To Love and Power Of Soul are also essential. We've Gotta Live Together? Not so much (I'll give you that). That's still my favorite live version of Message To Love. They all do pale in comparison to "Machine Gun", though (as you noted).

 

By their own admission, Motely Crue state that "Home Sweet Home" saved Theater Of Pain. In interviews, they said something along the lines of (completely paraphrasing from memory here) "the album as a whole wasn't that great. That one song [Home Sweet Home] allowed the band to continue." The implication was if they didn't have a hit to help them "get past" that album, things might've come to a screeching halt for them. Of course "Smokin' In The Boys Room" got airplay as well, so who knows?

 

Rio Grande is a great song, somewhat reminiscent of the Smile era

 

I love Cheap Trick, but outside of the gorgeous “Heaven’s Falling” Next Position Please is a dud.

 

Apart from Couldn't Call It Unexpected No. 4, Elvis Costello's Mighty Like a Rose isn't much.

 

Run, a song on the Snow Patrol album Final Straw.

 

I’m gonna p1ss off hipsters and try hards and answer the question straight:

Song To The Siren saves Tim Buckley’s Starsailor and then some - just very few folks will admit it.

I’m more lenient with Can and Ege Bamyasi because there are a just about a couple of songs that leap to the rescue rather than only Vitamin C … but it’s close.

 

No, it's horrible and contributed needlessly to the already tense situation to the point where Sting buried the tape to prevent it from ending up on the record.

 

Can't disagree more. The whole album is fantastic and its best track is Into The Majestic.

 

Carouselambra - Led Zeppelin ITTOD

(Sorry)

 

This is one of those things that isn't "possible" for me. In other words, if I only liked one track on an album then the album can't be saved.

Any album that I own and thus repeatedly enjoy is decent to great from start to finish.

 

I used to think Stormbrimger the track saved Deep Purple’s Stormbrimger album, until the penny dropped and I realised the funky, soulful rock which the rest of the album comprised was actually where the magic was at.

In fact, the title track was the anomaly, even if it was the only throwback to vintage Blackmore.

 

This

 

"I Can't Take It" isn't to your liking?

I like the album very much. It's almost like a sister album of Utopia's 1982 self-titled release (for obvious reasons).

I'd love to hear Todd's demo of "Heaven's Falling".

 

I agree Machine Gun makes this iconic, but its not exactly scrap heap without it. Lets say they used the first shows Hear My Train A Comin' in it's place I think it would still be highly regarded albeit it a tier lower than the release as is with that specific Machine Gun take intact. So I dont so much think of Machine Gun as saving it as I think of it as elevating it.

 

Mike Oldfield. Tubular Bells on Tubular Bells

 

Scorpions "Pure Instinct"

Wild Child is the only song that I like from it, but I liked it so much I had to buy the CD.

 

OCD would never allow me to get rid of it (and I love the Stones so I probably wouldn't even if I didn't have OCD), but "All About You" is the only song I like on Emotional Rescue. I don't mind "She's So Cold" and I can tolerate "Let Me Go" and "Down In A Hole". The rest can rot for all I care. (On the flip side, I actually love Dirty Work.)

 

This Is England

...and nothing can save that album.

 

Although Message To Love, Power Of Soul and Who Knows are keepers (despite the goofy yelping of Buddy Miles on the latter), I've never been bonkers on Buddy's song Them Changes or his tedious Sly Stone medley We Gotta Live Together. So Machine Gun, really makes the album.

 

For me it’s “Taking It All Too Hard” on Genesis’ self-titled 1983 album.

 

Echoes

 

"Lady Double Dealer" too.

 

"All for Leyna" almost saves Glass Houses. There's no saving The Nylon Curtain.

 

The Clash doesn’t have a song called “This is London”