What artist had the potential for a better album than what their discography ultimately delivered?

Smithereens. Not really sure why "Blow Up" failed to capitalize on the success of "11", but it all seemed downhill from there. Multiple covers albums certainly didn't help.

 

As a long time Byrds fanatic (first album owned, 1st ever concert in 1971): I'll agree with this excluding their first album "Mr. Tambourine Man" (which remains pretty easy to listen to from first to last song) and "Sweetheart".

 

It's hard to argue with this one. I love the Police, but none of their albums are truly great. Each one has a half-dozen fantastic songs and then some boring, weird, or annoying junk to pad it out to 40 minutes.

 

I think the first one, Outlandos d'Amour, comes closest to greatness. It's a solid collection, and I even like the weirdo novelty track, "Be My Girl - Sally."

 

Liz Phair, after her first sensational album, and then...

 

I don't know... if you ask me, he had three decently solid albums in Mad Mad World, Ragged Ass Road, and X-Ray Sierra. The first two just needed a bit of pruning, they suffer from CD runtime disease. Cut four songs off each and they're great albums.

X-Ray Sierra is a fantastic album start to finish, though. If you ask me it's the best thing he ever did, Red Rider included.

 

I would love that!
Four or five years ago, I listened to an interview with Juliana Hatfield in which she talked briefly about working with Westerberg and she was asked if they were planning to do more work together. She said it was possible (though, of course, nothing since has come out). I mentioned what Juliana said in that interview on a thread here and someone responded by asking me, "Where the hell did you hear that?" I never knew if that poster was thrilled by the idea or maybe thought I was hallucinating, lol. Nope- I did indeed here her say that and always hoped it would happen! Not likely, but who knows?

 

True Blue is solid. Five hits out of nine tracks! and 4 album tracks which are kinda fluffy but not altogether awful

 

"If I Can't Have You" wasn't them, unless you're referring to the outtake that wasn't on the soundtrack. Two of the other songs were holdovers that had previously been hits.

 

If you think Whitechocolatespaceegg is a dud, then you are in the minority.

 

Fine. Minority is less crowded and therefore more pleasant !

I like Polyester Bride. Otherwise it's a level down (and probably a couple of levels down) compare to Exile. Just my opinion indeed.

 

Sledgehammer and In Your Eyes from 1986’s So were certainly huge hit singles, but his third self titled 1980 album (aka “melt”) was never surpassed in terms of sheer groundbreaking musical creativity.

 

Harry Nilsson for me.

 

Rod Stewart is the first one that came to mind. He was so good rocking the roof off with the Faces, but his solo career never really did much for me, aside from an occasional great song like "I Know I'm Losing You" or "Hot Legs" or "Infatuation".

His career seems to consist mostly of boring supermarket background music otherwise. A shame, because he has a totally unique voice and his early albums showed a lot of promise

 

This and I was also going to say Gomez.

 

Nilsson had a ton of great albums early in his career that the public mostly ignored unfortunately. Seems like he went off the rails after the Schmilsson albums and never really recovered after that, destroying his lovely voice in the process. It's too bad, he's one of my favorite singers up to that point

 

His first four albums don't show promise they are genuinely great - and that's four more than most can manage!

 

Of course you had to interrupt the thread with self-indulgent twaddle.

 

Releasing 3 albums a year in the early and mid-60s sold the Beach Boys short artistically. I have to make playlists condensing all those Capitol albums.

 

Agree about the Byrds, seems like every one of their pre-Rodeo albums has brilliant parts but get derailed into silliness and throwaway tracks ("Lear Jet Song" etc.). None are 100% great all the way through

 

As per Aristotle, sometimes; ∑ > parts

 

Damn. Looks like they are back to being a trainwreck. You have to have a Fisher in there.

 

Christopher David Booth

 

I love ABBA, but their best album isn't really an album - ABBA Gold.