Entertainment For Lively Minds
Bad albums that have great singles
I bought my first album, "La Folie", by the Stranglers, aged nine on the strength of their recent hit, "Golden Brown" and was appalled by what I had purchased. Having only discovered pop music, I had no knowledge of the Stranglers' former work and therefore expected to hear 11 mellow harpsichord laced ballads. The rest of the album was in reality largely melody free and featured the kind of malevolent cynical ranting that The Stranglers had been peddling for years. I later grew to rather like the album but at the time I was mortified (you would be on 50p per week pocket money given that the album set me back £3.19)..
..so to clarify - I'm not nominating "La Folie" as I now enjoy its blend of punky angst and lo-fi electronica..
..my nomination goes to Queen's "The Works". Now I'm no massive fan but the four singles from this album show off the musical range of the band better than any other run of singles from their career (not suprising given that each band member wrote one of the four singles). So Taylor and Deacon respectively provided the modern pop of Radio Gaga and I Want To Break Free, the former enhancing electronica to astounding effect. And the final two singles could almost have come from their classic mid-70s period; Mercury's beautiful opera-tinged, "Its A Hard Life", and May's balls-out-rock-tastic, "Hammer to Fall".
The peaks that the singles scaled, however, only enhanced the lousiness of "The Works'" other five cuts: the all rock and no balls, "Tear it Up", the piss poor rockabilly retread, "Man on the Prowl", the tuneless electronica of "Machines", the sickly blandness of "Keep Passing the Open Window" and worst of all the sentimental world weary pap of "Is This the World We Created". Its like they were high on cocaine for half of the album and on some dreadful comedown for the rest. This is not the only Queen album that has this massive gulf of quality between singles and album tracks; pretty much everything they released from 1980 onwards has a similar trend, almost signifying that they could just about be bothered to make their albums sell, but weren't too bothered what they were selling.
So its over to the massive....
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Before reading your post
I saw the headline and thought, 'Queen'. Great singles, not so great with the albums and as much as I love The Works (it got me at the crucial age of 12) I now see all its many faults.
First album i bought Queen - Hot Space
Under Pressure and nine other lesser disco influenced tracks.
Hot Grot
One of the worst albums released by a major act. Under Pressure was a single ages before it came out, probably intended as a one-off until they realized how bad the LP was, and added it. The Works was a positive triumph in comparison.
News of the World, 77
Two fantastic tracks, We will rock you, We are the champions, and the rest was a right load of old tosh. I loved Queen in the 70's, the first four lp's were so melodic and varied, guess that's not a bad legacy, but they became a singles/live band from then on
i'm not being picky...
but the line you use 'but they became a singles/live band' isn't to be sneezed at. There's few enough bands who've managed to keep spinning the three plates of
a) great albums
b) great singles
c) a constant gigging presence.
Most are lucky to manage 2...
..and arguably...
...they became an even better live band as their albums grew weaker (I'm only going on video evidence here mind)
The second album I ever bought
was "Prophets, Seers and Sages..." by Tyrannosaurus Rex. I thought I recognised the song Deborah and although I was vaguely aware this wasn't quite the same band as then Top 40 staples T. Rex, surely it couldn't be that different? After all, it's still Marc Bolan isn't it? Of course, Deboraarobed on this album is sort of the single but the rest was really too freaky and too unlike T. Rex for the 14 year me.
In time, though, I've come to rather love this album. So it kind of qualifies and it doesn't!
And
now you can get the same experience listening to Devendra Banhart who has the same billy goat gruff bleat in his voice.
The Mystery Jets
I got their most recent album on the basis of two fantastic singles: Young Love (with Laura Marling) and Two Doors Down. Unfortunately, the rest of the album is tinny, unimaginative, badly-produced rubbish, culminating in a cover of Aztec Camera's Somewhere In My Heart that is so bad, you'll want to put your ears in a Breville sandwich toaster.
The Last Shadow Puppets
"The Age of The Understatement". Cracking title track/single, rest of album filled with songs that sound like Space (Scally 90s pop not 70s electronica version) but just not as good. A classic case of not judging an album by its cover.
Lady Gaga
the fame Monster, great singles nonedescript other tracks, this affliction I'm afraid is the template for most modern albums. no one seems to be able to craft an album the way Jeff Lynne and Andy Partridge did, two notable exceptions the new Gorillaz album and Owen Palletts Heartland Oh and Little Boots Hands
Interesting that you should mention Andy Partridge
– as a lover of all the XTC singles, I have tried and tried to like most of their albums but only Apple Venus Vol 1 really does the business (Skylarking isn’t too far off mind)
Apple Venus is my favourite too
But I think Drums and Wires,Black Sea, English Settlement, Mummer ,the Big Express, Nonesuch are all great albums Oranges and Lemons maybe should have been a single but has great moments too and then there's The Dukes Of Stratosphere albums and fuzzy warbles
I love Keep Passing The Open Windows
It's a great song, which I find very uplifting. And I'm rather fond of Is This The World We Created too. Taken on its own merits, it's a lovely tune, and I think Freddie sings it beautifully.
Agree about Hot Space, ther's some really terrible stuff on there, especially the electronic stodge. I haven't listened to it for many long years, though I recall I used to like Las Palabras De Amor.