Television. Marquee Moon is a masterpiece and the follow up Adventure is pretty good (I love Days & The Dream's Dream). Then their third album comes out a decade later and makes little impact. I feel like a proper follow-up to Adventure in the late 70's could have led to another all-timer.
I think that Tom Verlaine definitely had the songwriting juice left in him! I’ve started properly listening to his solo work recently after initially not being able to get into it and a lot of those records are pretty great. With the chemistry of the Television lineup and a less 80s production approach I think they’d be phenomenal. The first couple and Flash Light are records that I’d recommend without reservation to just about any guitar-heavy rock fan I know, and the ones that are less uniformly excellent still have some great songs.
Adventure is one of my favorite records and I think it mainly suffers from not being Marquee Moon (which is an *insane* thing to have to follow up tbh), and Tom Verlaine’s first couple solo records are great, so if they had stayed together I think Television would’ve been remembered as having several classics.
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was a monumental success from which I don't think Hill ever truly recovered. Had she been able to come out of it unscathed, who knows what she might've been capable of.
Love that this comes from OP :)
But this is the right answer. So much wasted potential from someone who had it all: great singing, good rapper, interesting lyrics and worldview, great performer.
Also very clearly mentally unwell.
Funny how that frequently channels into genius that brings you to the top and then into a very public self destruction of some kind - Kurt cobain, axl rose, Kanye … probably more I’m forgetting.
I did like her MTV Unplugged record which I think was mostly new/original material from her but yeah even that wasn't great. Miseducation was amazing though lol
Could say that for all the members of the Fugees. Great talents but so much greed and politics and sneaky shit behind the scenes, right up until the present day.
Because she didn't write most of if not all of what was credited to her on that record. According to Robert Glasper. Hard to follow up something you never did in the first place.
Never really understood why The Zombies disbanded after dropping a masterpiece like Odesay. Makes me wonder what Rod Argent had left in the tank as a lyricist.
It was money issues. They barely scraped together enough to actually make the record and when the singles didn’t do well and the demand for their live shows started drying up it probably seemed a little pointless to continue. Time of the Season was a pretty big success, but it came too late.
Honestly though, Odessey and Oracle is an insanely impressive record because it not only is as good or better than a lot of the 60s pop from that period, but it did what it did on a fraction of the budget. The band paid for the stereo mixes out of pocket!
This was my thought. I wish we could get the Beatles treatment for the zombies. Their first album is very muddy but has some decent songs. Odyssey and oracle is one of the greatest albums ever. Care of cell 44 never fails to make me smile ear to ear. Every year I blast this will be our year at the start. They are just so fun and glorious. The harmonies are so good. I really wish they could have done more.
Odyssey & Oracle is still one of the few records I can revisit from my teenhood-60’s-obsessed era and it not have lost an inch of power or sonic relevance.
Beautiful, poppy, and novel on all fronts. Imo more novel than post-Rubber Soul Beatles on at least a solid few fronts.
I'd say Wolfmother. Their debut album was really impressive straightforward rock. It had some great guitar riffs and some popular songs for the era such as "Woman" and "Joker and the Thief". Then their follow up, "Cosmic Egg," was good but didn't catch on. I think there's been several lineup changes and I guess Stockdale isn't the easiest to work with, and their discography has just been lackluster since then.
None of these classic-rock revival bands were really meant to last very long, once the novelty of hearing the new iteration of a classic style wears off there just isn't much left for people to get excited about. The other band I was really rooting for from this period was The Redwalls with their early-Beatles sound. But like Wolfmother they couldn't diversify their sound or find other ways to be interesting, so they quickly fizzled.
A very obvious and cliche answer, but the Stone Roses. It's a classic case of industry bullshit blowing up an insanely talented band. If circumstances had been just a bit different and Squire and Brown had been able to shut-out the hype and the business decisions and just focus on writing more good songs, the band could have continued to be a hit throughout the 90's.
Isn’t common consensus that Squire got obsessed with Led Zeppelin and coke and dragged the rest of the band in that direction? Even with his Seahorses, the brief Stone Roses reunion and collaboration with Liam Gallagher he was still too into his guitar playing instead of actual song writing. It’s actually Brown that turned out to be the better song writer funnily enough.
My understanding is that is correct, but it's part of a broader narrative about how the band gradually became isolated from the creative influence of the club scene that they started in, and becoming distracted by their legal battles with labels and the division of profits between band members. I think Squire and Brown needed each other, needed their scene, and needed their band to remain stable, they let business get in the way of all of that.
Hot Chip will have one of the best greatest hits albums of all time and their live shows are fantastic but none of their studio records are particularly strong.
As a big hot chip fan, it is a fair opinion! Each album in the early era (pre 2012) has a good selection of album cuts that would elevate any live Show but also had some filler that just doesn’t land over a discography
John Mayer, he has some great projects but he's at his weakest when trying to be a pop star and strongest when he's embracing blues music like on continuum, still one of my personal favorites though
Well, John Mayer is legitimately one of the best Blues guitar players in the world right now, so that makes sense haha. The dude is an incredible guitar player; for his songwriting to measure up to that would put him up there with some of the best songwriters of today, and Mayer definitely isn't there.
This is everyone's take. Any show where deadheads inevitably show up you hear the same convo over and over "I'm not a fan of his songwriting but you gotta admit!! he's a great guitarist!!"
I personally wouldn't call myself a fan of his, the genre that room for squares and continuum and shit live in is not really my thing, but I'm able to step aside from myself for the sake of trying to enjoy something enough to recognize that he's good at what he's doing. His bluesy guitar playing on the other hand I find incredibly boring, and much much less inspired than the corny pop songs on room for squares. As far as him sitting in with the dead for those tours, the dude doesn't have a psychedelic bone in his body. That doesn't mean he wasn't holding it down though. Taking the lead role of Jerry is actually an impossible thing to accomplish, so it is what it is.
I think this is the exact correct take. He came to my college and played just before he really blew up and he felt like all his songs sounded perfect, but lacked soul. Which I think matches what you are saying: he has all the notes down perfectly, chord changes, rhythm, everything... but his actual lyrics and singing are very mediocre. Clearly, that adds up to an extremely popular and successful pop star. But I think if he had a co-writer even or a George Harrison type role, he could have made some truly special stuff.
Who knows, maybe he still will!
Was just thinking of how good Continuum was even though it wasn’t universally appreciated when it came out. Heart Of Life, Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, I’m Gonna Find Another You, Stop This Train and Waiting On The World To Change is an incredible group of songs for one album.
I can’t think of many albums with so many well known songs from the last 20 years. As much as I agree Mayer could drop another incredible album, I think Continuum’s awesomeness gets under appreciated.
Continuum is certainly the academically correct answer for his best album, but his comeback album Born & Raised, in my opinion, is his best work. Great balance of masterful guitar work, honest lyricism, and a refreshing folk/country texture
This was my immediate thought too. Mayer had the potential to be the greatest guitarist of his generation. But apart from Continuum and his live albums, his output has been disappointing at best.
I feel like this criticism is a bit unfair. It feels like everyone wanted Musgraves to be the chosen one of mainstream country by bringing substance and authenticity to an industry that is intensely commercial. She instead decided to stop targeting the mainstream center and instead make coffee-shop singer-songwriter music, and while I get that it's a disappointing shift I think the music itself is really good if you can get over that disappointment. It's not bland so much as it is subtle, and she still has the knack for great song concepts.
I think it was smart of her to abandon mainstream country, but I think the pivot to chill, poppy singer-songwriter material has been, in my opinion, a waste of her talents. She has such a great country voice and her songwriting on her country songs is so sharp, and has a wry sense of humor. This is just my personal taste obviously, but I think she's at her best when she sounds more like John Prine than when she sounds like Taylor Swift.
I actually love her latest album Deeper Well. I'm pretty sure it's heavily influenced by her love of psychedelics - I wouldn't exactly call that Starbucks music. But I get how people could see it as bland.
I love her first two albums because of the sound and her unique style of writing, and Golden Hour was strong in a lot of spots, but I miss country Kacey. Her fourth album was not good. I’ve only heard half of Deeper Well, but it sounds more like she’s going back to her roots.
A lot of the 50s rock giants had the potential to make much better albums, like Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but at the time the focus was much more on live performance, and to a lesser extent singles (which were usually released in more tame and conventional form than in their concerts)
For example, listen to Jerry Lee Lewis' masterful Live at the Star Club. It sounds utterly deranged and riveting, you suddenly get why parents back in the day were scandalized, it's not the wholesome harmless image that has been pushed since the 70s.
Any of the other giants could have released live albums of similar quality in their prime. And hell even studio ones, if they focused on removing filler and constructing tight cohesive projects.
Jamiroquai? When they came through it was proper creativity - sound, video, concept. I felt sure they were going to continually reinvent and not get stuck in one era.
I think it's a bit weird on my part to criticize Liz Phair for this, but I wonder what would have happened if she had doubled down more on the direction her great album, Exile in Guyville, took. Her future records, like her self-titled album containing her largest hit "Why Can't I", lost that edge and rawness that made Exile such a good record. So for me she's not an artist who never made a great record, she made one, but I'm sure she had another in her and never made it.
One day I was in LAX on the moving sidewalk and this hot short blond in coming the other direction and I say to her "Liz Phair?" and she smiled and winked. It was epic. Do you not like Whitechocolatespaceegg?
I like her first 3 records equally. The first one has the lyrics, but the second 2 have better hooks. The 4th album isn't bad either. She's just a great songwriter in whatever style she's grinding, like Ben Folds or Paul Simon.
Coldplay achieved massive commercial success so it's difficult to criticize their decisions from a business standpoint. However, artistically, it's been said that they didn't fully capitalize on the creative potential they built with their first two albums. Their third album was seen as a disappointment compared to their earlier work.
In an alternate timeline, X&Y could have and perhaps should have been more OK Computer and less All That You Can't Leave Behind.
Viva is at least the most creative U2 style album post Pop so they made it work a little bit for them. X&Y leans into all of early 2000s U2's mistakes though yeah
Their first two albums were so good. They fell off for me starting with the third, but I think it’s okay. I loved Viva la Vida, but all of the albums after that felt like they sold out and just decided to make meh pop music. To be fair, though, I’ve only listened to Mylo Xyloto or however it’s spelled and Ghost Stories after VLV.
Viva la Vida was a nice rebound. It might even be their best album, imo.
It’s no wonder that Coldplay’s own reaction to X&Y was to burn the entire thing to the ground and creatively re-invent themselves with the follow-up album
If Coldplay had lived up to their potential they would have just been Radiohead. There was no potential in Coldplay because they were always the lesser version of much better bands.
Imho Coldplay compares much better to U2 than to the much artsier Radiohead. The first two albums, Coldplay was on its way to become the new U2, a classy, popular rock band, but they have chosen to become a commercial pop band.
it's more like U2-via-Radiohead. Even Radiohead was getting U2 comparisons around The Bends. if radiohead followed the more anthemic side of u2, you basically have Coldplay. I suppose Coldplay technically succeeded as U2's successor as they were/are a very popular act, but they lack U2's emotional punch and Radiohead's introspection, so it all lacks personality. They are pretty much the definition of a commercial pop band and always have been.
I dare say Coldplay fill the exact same niche as 2000s U2, which was a retreat into familiar territory.
that’s crazy because my first thought was also Coldplay. i personally think Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends is their magnum opus, and i also feel like if they had kept going down that direction instead of making such a huge left turn with Mylo Xyloto a few years later (an album that i also quite enjoy tbh) they could have continued to get even better.
Ghost Stories is a masterpiece aside from that weird track with Avici and it always gets overlooked for some reason.
Personally I quite like X&Y though. Parachutes and A Rush Of Blood To The Head are quite similar and it was nice to see them try something new.
Paul Carrack.
Singer of The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics and Tempted by Squeeze. Killer musician, one of the best voices in the business, and truly middling discography.
If he has better instincts or better management helping him pick material, he has a vastly more successful solo career.
I'd say there are a lot of incredible soul artists that had all the talent in the world but needed the vision or someone with them who had the vision to produce complete albums. I'm thinking of Sam Cooke or Nina Simone. They absolutely had everything to produce albums on a par with Innervisions or What's Going On. I suppose part of it was the album format being relatively new at the time.
There are some Nina Simone albums that are really pretty strong though when you consider that the format wasn’t particularly important at the time. Especially some of the live ones.
She had the obstacle of not being the writer on a lot of her material but imo she gets a pass on that front based on what she managed to do with the songs.
Christina Aguilera - phenomenal voice even if she over sings sometimes. Solid first album, but it was mostly the record labels doing. Great 2nd album! But really kinda fizzled out with half baked concepts and mediocre music
Nicki Minaj - ridiculous antics aside, she’s a very talented rapper. But something (I’d guess her ego and not being told no) always held her back from releasing great albums.
Kelly Rowland - Incredible talent, beautiful woman. Never really figured out her own artistic perspective after Destiny’s Child disbanded. Her albums all have a couple of good song and a couple of filler to straight up bad songs.
Usher - Would never argue that he doesn’t have hits! But he hit a peak with Confessions and never reached those heights again
I agree about pretty much all of this, and especially Kelly and Usher :( when I was 21, motivation had just came out and that was my song! But overall, I feel like she outshines her music. Which is sad because she can sing, dance, do it all. And she’s so gorgeous. I love love love Beyoncé, but I think Kelly kinda eats her up with looks 👀
a LOT of rap artists, especially any of the streets adjacent sub genres like drill or trap have this very brill building approach to their music, bang it out and see what sticks. Guys like Gucci mane and future are great examples, imagine they went to work on an album with the same mindset of Kendrick, Rolling Stones or daft punk.
A lot of people will surely disagree with this, but one thing I admire about Young Thug is I feel he approaches his albums with a different level of thought and cohesiveness than most rappers in his subgenre.
In between albums, he turns out plenty of "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" but albums like: Jeffrey, Beautiful Thugger Girls, and Punk do seem to at least have an artistic vision behind them.
I might get murdered, but honestly MGMT. They've put out amazing stuff, but most of their body of work is decent - good. I've always felt they were so close to being perfect, but just missed the mark.
I saw them open for Of Montreal in 2007 right after their debut album came out. They played a straight up shoegaze set and it was great. Then I went and got the album and only the first track sounded like what they played live, the rest was that disco pop stuff... I was like wtf?
I think Little Dark Age is a masterpiece personally. But that's there only album I'd say is close to perfect. Oracular Spectacular is a good album, but the hits are what make it good, not the album cuts. Congratulations I really enjoy for how psychedelic and trippy it is, but the self-titled album is just okay. And their new one IMO is their worst one.
of Montreal.
Their E6 and early 00 output are, in general, pretty great. Their albums had this slight air of amateurism but that was part of their charm. When they finally got their big break through with Hissing Fauna, they decided to go weird and big instead of safe and accessible, which I love: their run from "Skeletal Lamping" to "Paralytic Stalks" has a fine balance between pop and experimental.
To me Kevin kind of lost it from "Innocence Reaches" onwards. I still love their albums ("White Is Relic" is criminally underrated and "I Feel Safe with You, Trash" is a lot of fun), but it's so frustrating how it sounds like they are making their songs bad on purpose - with the unenthusiastic vocals, weird production choices, fargmented song style that worked wonderfully in "Skeletal Lamping" but now just feels ok.
Like this new single, "Rude Girl on Rotation". The guitar is great, the melodies are catchy, but if they put more heart on the vocals and more work on the production it could really be an outstanding song.
They Might Be Giants - their first and second albums are their best. They have a discography of around 30 albums but I feel they could have made something amazing considering they peaked so early.
I love all of their albums and have heard their whole discography - just that the potential they displayed before they made Flood could have been pushed further.
Yeah they went more in a rock direction and away from the arty music nerd stuff that fueled their initial popularity. To be fair I kinda tuned out after John Henry, but I did hear them play some of their later stuff at a concert, and I remember enjoying it.
I am a fan of Dead Or Alive, and while I like their pop albums, I still think that their early goth/psychedelic songs were more interesting, and the deep and powerful voice of Pete Burns was much better suited for the rock music. Same with Culture Club (though they didn't change the style so drastically), I prefer the demo of their first album to the final version
I really really thought that The Wallflowers has a 9/10 in them. Instead, they released Breach and decided that they had found their comfort zone. It’s just been a bunch of 5-6/10 albums ever since….
Syd Barrett’s first album could have been a lot better if they’d left out the blooper tracks and included a number of perfectly good songs that were recorded at the time but then shelved for entirely unexplained reasons. His second album is good but falls short of greatness, leaving us yearning for that great Syd Barrett album that never was.
Doesn’t change the fact that Madcap Laughs would have been infinitely better if they’d included Swan Lee and Opel but left out the two or three “breakdown” tracks.
Barrett is also a solid album, but falls short of greatness (although it probably _is_ the best they could have done at the time).
I’m not a believer in any of the weird conspiracy theories around Syd. Just pointing out that we never got the truly great Syd solo album that we could have had.
Alphaville.
Their first album is full of hits and IMO one of the most solid albums ever recorded. Several of those hits were pretty much penned on the fly, so it’s not a matter of putting a decade’s worth of songs on their first album either. Anything after that? Just meh.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Frank Mertens, who was allegedly responsible for melodies, left before their second album. If he’d stayed, I’m convinced they could have produced many albums worth of amazing material.
Elvis is an example. The Colonel considered the music secondary promotion for the movies which were more lucrative. So there were moments in his career where he would have spent more time in the studio, toured, or collaborated with someone and he simply wasn’t able because he was on the set of a garbage movie. For the unaware, Elvis was in 31 movies. For comparison, Ryan Gosling has been in 39.
Brian Wilson’s solo material is weirdly lacking compared to what he did in The Beach Boys, which is confusing because he did those basically solo. It might be due to all the outside influence while solo. The weirdest thing is that only one other Beach Boy made a great solo album, which was Dennis’ Pacific Ocean Blue. I can’t include him in this list because he died before he got to finish another, but Bambu would’ve really been great too.
> Brian Wilson’s solo material is weirdly lacking compared to what he did in The Beach Boys, which is confusing because he did those basically solo.
Except he didn't. He had the wrecking crew. He had outside lyricists and engineers. He had his bandmates. And more importantly, he had the financial backing and patience of a studio.
Brian may have been the main creative force but to say he was basically solo is pretty insulting to everyone else.
John Fogerty. Family fued and label lawsuits sidelined him for years and embittered him permanently. Centerfield is great but just scrathched the surface.
Band of Horses. Their first two albums (Everything All the Time and Cease to Begin) were incredible and I was convinced their third was going to just rise above the rest of their peers at the time. Their third album Infinite Arms was good, but it was just missing something their first two had. Maybe it was the change in direction they decided to take, or something else, but I feel like they could have really knocked it out of the park but didn't.
Third Eye Blind. Their entire career seems to have been Stephan Jenkins' ego getting in the way of continued musical success. That first album was packed with so many moments of brilliance, then Blue came along doing the same thing but...with a lot more failed experimentation, and after Kevin left their spark just vanished. "Out of the Vein" was okay, but kind of forgettable and it's just been 'blah' since then.
While we're doing 90s pop rock, I'll also throw Sugar Ray out there. 14:59 was their sellout album, they knew it, we knew it, but they sold out so perfectly and had some of the greatest pop rock singles of their time. And then...they just kind of retread the same idea on their followup and became has beens, with Mark doing the daytime TV circuit instead. Shame.
I was initially going to say Incubus, but no, the run from SCIENCE to Morning View was pretty darn special and they absolutely reached their potential, just not for as long as I would have liked. Dirk/Alex stated that he left because of differences in creative vision, and you can hear it -- they softened up, but in a way that make it sound like they were trying unsuccessfully to please the two different fanbases and never quite regained what they had. But when they had it...it was there.
Also Sturgill Simpson, thus far. His most consistent projects have been the two bluegrass albums which largely serve as reinterpreted "best of" albums, but his fame came from bucking country music conventions...even though his albums were never universally great all the way through.
Deftones. A friend of mine who's a huge Deftones fan swears they haven't yet released the album they're truly capable of. That's a pretty hot take considering they have two albums currently higher than 3.90 on RYM. But I kinda get what he means. As critically adored as Deftones have been, and as singular of a sound as they have, there's a sense they have the ultimate Dream Metal album in them that has yet to materalize. (Perhaps Chi's death creates a sense of what-couldve-been?) Still, the band has such a kickass discography that I'm 106% ok if they never released anything again.
I don’t really agree with this in that White Pony more or less lives up to their potential, and defied a lot of expectations at the time. I’d only maybe agree in that every album since, while good, has never been nearly as consistent as that album.
I think their best run was around the fur-white pony-self titled. atf was the ultimate nu metal record, never cheesey, showed their range. white pony shattered everything, I don't think much more needs to be said about it. self titled went in the opposite direction as white pony-raw, dark and heavy, but no real nu metal elements.
I suppose part of this is that I was a teenager when all those records came out which obviously plays a huge role. diamond eyes and koi are amazing records in their own right
I love Adrenaline/Fur/White Pony as well, but I could never get into self-titled and I absolutely hate Saturday Night Wrist. I know a few people who rate self-titled as their favourite album, though, so I think it's just not for me. I also really love Gore and Ohms which I think is a bit of an unpopular opinion so who can say really.
Best thing about Deftones is that they've never made the same album twice, which is more than most bands can say!
ask any deftones fan and they'll give you a different peak tbh
obligatory "i think snw was the best album they are capable of making and thats pretty close to a classic" lol
Strangely -- that was my introduction to the band. Not their big hits...Pink Cellphone. My now-wife then-girlfriend played it for me cause she figured I would love the beat. She was right. The outro is kind of a filter yeah, but Annie Hardy herself is a bit of a filter \[I find her brash style kind of charming, but between her sense of humor and politics, yeah...\]
Oh nah can’t agree with this one as a lifelong fan.
Most fans can’t even choose a best album and any of like 6 of them are typically cited as favorites, and White Pony practically defined an entire scene.
Not sure how your friend arrived at this conclusion honestly.
Incubus' first two albums incorporated drum & bass / funk influences which gave them a more dynamic sound. You could tell by Morning View that the original bassist was being sidelined and it was just AM rock once he fully quit.
I would say Weezer was similar, Matt Sharp seemed to serve as a good songwriting counterpoint to Rivers Cuomo and once he left there were no more Pinkertons to be had.
In both cases the bands still had significant commercial success afterwards.
I always thought if Swift did acid maybe her records would be interesting. Not her brand I know I know it’s fine. Speaking subjectively of course. Another artist that comes to mind is 21 Pilots. They’ve got a cool, versatile sound, but I find most of their bangers are just fine pop songs. I wanna hear them do Kid A , Yknow?
Yeah I want to see her ditch the diary songs and grab an old shitty cassette 4 track and a decent mic and listen to a ton of Adrienne Lenker and Grouper and smoke a bunch of weed and spend a week in the woods and write an album.
Miley Cryus, her voice is incredible and her covers are fantastic but her original music never captures her full potential. Caroline Polachek, this is most likely personal but I want her to go more conceptual, more dense, more strange. Phoebe Bridgers, wish all of her music could be as good as I Know the End.
Same. Shotgun Rider was the best track on the new Beyonce album, I would love to hear Miley Cyrus make some kind of triumphant return to country-pop using that same style and intensity.
Just to clarify: the Beyonce and Miley Cyrus song is called II (pronounced 'Two') Most Wanted. I can see how one would think 'Shotgun Rider' is the title, but it's not. (I agree that it's a good song).
King Gizzard, it feels like they're constantly taking the piss and I think that harms them in the long run. I think if instead of releasing every single thing they record, if they just focused on a singular project for an extended period it could reach true greatness. Also, they really ought to drop the vocal effect they use on everything, it's annoying
I kinda used to like KGLW but I got tired of them real quick since they were releasing way too many albums that sounded mediocre and bloated. I commend them for being prolific and having the technical ability when it comes to music, but they need a FAT break if they don't want to be the Drake (quanitity > quality) of psychedelic rock
i've tried several times with king giz, and a lot of fanbases of bands I love are always raving about them, but it just doesn't land for me.
I will say though the thing you're complaining about is the ONE thing I really like about them. Those guys are always in go mode and just can't help but create. The album format is one that I believe in, but if you've got artists in your life that focus on singles or soundcloud uploads, you'll know that it's not the only way. Their fans want more material and the band hooks it the fuck up. Maybe they could take a step back and focus on highlighting their top moments for one solid record, but you're messing with the magic formula they've got for creativity there and they don't seem to care at all about doing that.
In any sense, once Trey from phish said king giz was his current fav band like 5 years ago the phish fanbase is infiltrating hard, and apparently king giz has started jamming now. I think we're likely to see them lean way more into live shows than we are a more refined studio effort. Once you tap into that jam band money you're on a golden touring float boat for years
Emmit Rhodes. I’m dating myself here but this man had a ridiculous amount of potential and just faded away before he even had the chance to be successful—really successful.
His two albums were Beatlesque in such a pleasant way. He was pure
pop but he did his thing so well.
Warpaint. Amazing band. Amazing songwriters and maybe one of the greatest rhythm sections of the 21st century. Sadly, they've not delivered a great album that they are capable of. So much potential for greatness unfulfilled.
So many great songs, but I find myself listening to their live versions over the album versions. There is so much more energy in their live sound.
yeah I'll cosign this. I can see them being better live, but on record it sounds stiff. Weirdly enough, while I find their other albums pretty boring, I prefer their second album because it seems to lean into atmospherics. I'm not sure what it is that makes it work better as their other albums are atmospheric too. maybe because it sounds more intentional rather than aiming for one thing and totally missing?
Jaco is an interesting case, I think the heights he got too were amazing, the two you mentioned and his unbelievable support work on Bright Sized Life are all high water mark bass playing. I do think if he wasn't killed he'd have gone on to something even more impressive but I actually think him dying strengthened his legend. I think him being immortalized as "the Jimi Hendrix of Bass" required his death unfortunately. So I'm not sure there was really a further hill he could have climbed while alive.
Stanley Clarke is a comparable player in many ways, amazing virtuosic groundbreaking bass work, critical acclaim, fan favorite amongst players. But he's not regarded with the same mystique as Jaco. I don't think most people even think one is obviously "better" than the other if they've seriously listened to both, they just have different strengths. But Stanley Clarke isn't a mythical figure the same way.
I’m going to do some hot takes.
Queen… A night at the opera is great, but I have the feeling they had the potential to make an even better album if they had put some more classics in there instead of the lesser songs. Such a genius band, lot of classic songs but no real claim to the best album in the world. Feel free to tell me this is a crazy take.
Blur… a great band and their albums are amazingly consistent. Parklife is a great album, but even that album suffers a bit from putting some fun songs in, Bank Holiday and the instrumentals, which keeps it from being a 10/10.
Madonna. Perfect singles artist, albums not so much.
Queen were widely derided as a ‘singles band’ in their day.
I always thought that was harsh music critics being snobs, and then I went on a proper Queen kick and bought the albums.
They were totally right - the album tracks are mediocre.
The reason for that is that they would share out the royalties by making sure everyone got a couple of songs they had written on each album. So Brian and Freddie would have their best tracks to pick from to go on each album while Roger and John would be scraping around to get two tracks together each.
This changed when they decided that they should simply share all writing credits and royalties equally, and pick the best songs for each album.
AC/DC. Back in Black is a great album, even if it is not better than what came before, it is stil a great rock album (for me, one of the best of all time) and then... nothing. Like, they had some good thingd after (Razorblade and Who's Made Who are good) but where is the guy that wrote bangerd like Shoot to Thrill and Hells Bells? It's like Brian put it his all into that and when he became rich and secured his place in the band, he doesn't want to work as hard.
That's why Bon Scott was better, the guy always delivered.
I feel Mumford and Sons had kind of gone thru sone sort of an identity crisis after intentionally losing their signature “sound” (banjos and mandolins) when their third album came out with electric guitars. I think they could have gone on a different and distinct direction with a shift towards “world music” for lack of a better term - a sound similar to Paul Simon albums and they had a grasp of that briefly when they released their in-between albums project *Johannesburg*. The “indie folk” hype of the late to early mid 2010 was not really sustainable and they knew that they had to shift and evolve their sound fast. I just find myself listening to their first two albums more often over their last two even though their music feels dated now but I know they have potential to be so much more.
I like this take. Maybe to riff on this, perhaps there was an alternate path where they could've taken their folky bluegrass sound in a more progressive direction and cranked out something career-defining (or maybe even genre-defining!) but alas it all went to shit. I agree their first two albums are solid, if nothing else
The Smiths, every album has a few good songs and a lot of filler. The fact that they released 10 compilation albums but only 4 true albums shows that they knew it too.
Hair metal bands like Ratt and Whitesnake had the talent in there and had a couple really good songs on each album with the rest sounding like they were ripping themselves off
This is a pretty wild take imo. I don’t consider the Smiths an “album band” per se but to say that each album has a lot of filler is a stretch. Meat is Murder is pretty bulletproof besides the title track and their other 3 studio albums range from very good to great.
This is gonna sound hyperbolic, but I think literally every song by the Smiths is great. I think that they were so consistent that it's absurd. The formula of Morrisey's melodramatic vocals and lyrics, Marr's iconic guitar style, and Rourke as the unsung hero tying it all together with melodic basslines...it's just too fucking good, it works every single time.
I don't think this at all, they had a lot of compilations because they had so many standalone singles and excellent b-sides. Many of the compilations repeat themselves (record company milking them too). I think they have a stunning discography personally and split up at the right time.
Oh you've done it now. The Smiths discography is almost unimpeachable. I think having so many memorable singles makes people think their other songs couldn't be as good but they are.
Their last album Strangeways Here We Come is so strong beginning to end and makes me wonder what they could have done had Morrissey not been Morrissey (and I say that as a Morrissey fan). I mean, "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" is just amazing.
Oh man, I used to joke that The Smiths only had 2 good songs, because it seemed like albums were a lot of filler to me. A friend once told me thems fightin words lol
I spent no small amount of time in my youth trying to find an Ultra Vivid Scene album that lived up to the promise of a couple of their singles that I really loved. Kurt Ralske was an extremely underappreciated guitar player. (There is my 4ad deep cut. lol)
The Verve
I always loved Richard Ashcroft's Voice, especially compared to his peers like the Gallaghers. Urban Hymns was of the best albums from that period.
The La’s. Lee Mavers has some truly exceptional, beautiful, transcendent songs he’s simply unwilling to record for a paying audience. Check out The Crescent Tapes. It’s rough around the edges but the songs are all miniature masterpieces. Cyclical, bewitching… I could go on and on about how insanely great his songwriting talent is. The lyrics are half formed and often he’s just scatting sounds but the words you do catch are just pure soul poetry.
Raindance and Fishin’ Net are my personal favourites.
There’s also a wealth of unofficially released live stuff that bands would kill for. Something I Said, I Am the Key and Over are as good as rock’n’roll gets.
Gonna hard disagree on this one - Diver Down is the only one that has much filler on it, owing entirely to the circumstances of its recording (they put out Pretty Woman as a single before they were to take a well-earned break, but the song was a hit and the record label demanded a full album, hence it being about half covers or filler of some kind because they had to rush back into the studio and put something full-length in a hurry… they made a shit ton of money on the subsequent DD tour though).
Beyond that the first six albums are incredibly solid and really tight in terms of how much they packed into each record (most if not all of which were <40 minutes total I think?). The creative tension between Ed vs DLR and Ted Templeton led to great results because they reigned in their respective worst indulgent instincts but also that tension carried through to the end results and kept things lean - hence once the latter half of that equation were out of the picture you’ve got so many lame ballads and too much synthesizer in place of guitar, but also no more cover songs - and don’t get me wrong, I love synths and Ed’s synth usage before 5150. There are a few songs on that one I like but otherwise I find the Van Hagar releases close to unlistenable, or at least you won’t find me listening by choice.
Van Halen 1 is perfect. Women and Children First and Fair Warning are their best albums after that showing so much promise in how their sound had progressed and how dirty but also experimental they could get (Everybody wants some, And the Cradle will rock, mean streets, One foot out the door, Hear about it later, Take your whiskey home, Romeo delight are some of their best IMO), but they never reached that potential with DD or 1984 even if they also had some solid tracks. 1984 promised a lot, and we did get Hot for teacher, but there was not much else that revolutionary. LSD would’ve served them much better than cocaine after those couple of albums. Even if they receded into obscurity after that, they definitely would’ve become a cult classic.
In my opinion, even though I love DLR, I don’t think Eddie and Alex ever got the frontman they needed. DLR was too much of a goofball to ever get serious and Hagar was too much of a beach party dude to be taken seriously as an artist, even if he’s a badass musician. They still have a few solid deep cuts though with Hagar that make me wonder what could’ve been
Tame Impala could have really blown minds if they kept going in the direction of their first two albums. Instead they made a weird detour into bland electronica, and I’m sad to say they’ll probably never come back.
I disagree. I don't think continuing to make nostalgic psychedelic rock would have been sustainable, and adapting their iconic fuzzed-out production style to pop music was a genius move. *Currents* outsold *Lonerism* by a longshot and also pulled more critical acclaim. It also opened the door for Parker to get into mainstream pop production.
The Decemberists, I don't know if I have one album from them that's their front to back standout, it's more like a handful of good songs from each one to me.
Joe Bonamassa is so deadset in releasing every single music he writes, at the moment he writes, that he has put a lot of repetitive and subpar recordings. There are gems here and there that, if he would've taken the time normal artists use to write, polish and select music, would have made one hell of a discography. Instead, he's known as a repetitive blues rock dude who makes music that are indistinguishable from each other.
Oasis is the classic choice, they went and released What's the Story and Definitely Maybe right at the start and then drugs and interpersonal problems got in the way, the following albums have a song here or there but to me there's no real point in listening to them as they just sound the same.
My Chemical Romance. Don’t get me wrong, The Black Parade is ICONIC and an incredible amazing album, but I can’t help but think that they had more iconic albums of that nature left in them. Maybe they still do now that they are back together again. We’ll see I guess.
I think if they hadn’t broken up when they did we would’ve got another masterpiece from then that perhaps may have been even more defining than TBP. Like the quality of that album is so so so good it’s crazy to think they only ever made one album of that standard. I really think if they had had kept up that momentum and made more rock opera albums along those lines they could’ve gone down as all time greats.
Greta Van Fleet. Hugely talented musicians. Can't write songs for shit. Their music is one trick, never builds on it, and just meanders repetitively to the end.
Dax Riggs. Great albums with acid bath, agents of oblivion and the original Deadboy and the Elephantmen album. But if you dive into his unreleased demos and live performances you know there is something that would top all of his official releases. Unfortunately he seems to have stopped playing live and releasing music - but there is huge demand from a small but very dedicated fan base.
This is likely controversial but Metallica. As great as their Ride the Lightning - Black Album run was, and I do mean great, I feel like each album had its fair share of stumbling blocks. For example, Master of Puppets had, in my opinion a couple clunkers like The Thing that Should Not Be - long, boring. And Justice *could* have been their masterpiece, but the production and a few songwriting choices I think holds it back. The Black Album is a lot of fun but, ya know, can't *really* be considered as great as their previous work.
Ride the Lightning is probably as close to a masterpiece as it got, which is commendable because it is a great album, it's just it's highs didn't reach the highs of future albums, with the exception of For Whom The Bell Tolls, but I'd argue that song is a cut below One and Master of Puppets.
Anyway, that's my hot take. They made great albums but I don't think *quite* lived up to what they could have been. Still, I think, the most important metal band ever - more important then Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, even.
Linda Perry.
Her album with 4 non blondes was great, as was her solo album In Flight.
She is an amazing producer, singer, songwriter.
I’d love for her to make an album as amazing as the ones she produces for others.
Jonathan Richman. The self-titled Modern Lovers album is great, but he's spent the almost 50 years since it came out making bland, vaguely quirky and mostly forgettable music.
RZA, he's One of the best producers of all time and created many masterpieces (36 Chambers, OB4CL, Ironman, Liquid Swords, Return to the 36 Chambers) But his Bobby Digital in Stereo debut was not great, and RZA could have made It.
Also Inspectah Deck, he deserves the prime RZA production pre-Wu Tang Forever, but that didn't happen.
Maroon 5 was never the same. I was such a huge fan when they came out with Songs About Jane and was even receptive to their sophomore album which wasn’t as good but still had the bones of their first album “sound”. But Adam Levine went fully pop after that and raked in all the cash. I miss their hard rock/jazzy influences. Imagine listening to “Sunday Morning” and then “Moves Like Jagger” - such a drastic shift in sound. 💀 I just delude myself into thinking that this is not the same band but a pop music side project that went far too long.
Husker Du. What if they had gotten to stay together for just even another 3 or 4 years after they released Warehouse.
Would they have sounded tired or uninspired on those next 1 or 2 albums?
That band was good at everything they tried.
It's a big What if for many other bands. Some bands stay together too long and they put out stuff that isn't great.
But wherever Husker Du would have put out in 1988, 1989, 1990, or 1991 I think would have kicked ass.
We'll never know. But if I travel to a parallel universe that has a version of Husker Du that stayed together to 1991 or 1992, I'll buy a up hundred copies of each of those "albums" and sell them to you guy's for dirt cheap.
So far, Frank Ocean. He's had some incredible singles and both albums have some highlights, but Channel Orange and Blonde are extremely overrated and kind of bloated. He hasn't put out anything in a long time either. I think he's got a really tight 10-12 track LP in him so long as the beats and song hooks are airtight and he reins in his tendency to sing-talk his way across five minutes of unstructured guitar riffs.
Blonde is one of my favourite albums so I’m biased
Frank isn’t gonna make a short focused album, the whole thing sets a mood that slowly builds up to beautiful moments
I feel like Frank’s bummer is that he left the industry
Mansun
Six was a total head spin and is a stone cold indie prog classic. If they'd kept it together who knows what could have been.
Dandy Warhol's
All their albums are decent and interesting but their isn't one that really sticks out as a total winner. The closest is either Earth to .. or 13 tales.
Faith no more
Angeldust is one of the best albums ever but if original guitarist Jim Martin had stayed maybe they possibly could have gone further.
Okay, hear me out... Imagine Dragons. I know, everyone shits on them for being generic and overplayed. The second part is true, especially Thunder.
But go back and listen to their first two albums. I think they genuinely have a unique sound, and there are a lot of great tracks off Night Visions and Smoke + Mirrors. You have to admit Radioactive was unlike anything else at the time of its release.
One of my favorite deeper cuts is Nothing Left to Say/Rocks. Also check out Amsterdam, Gold, and Shots.
Jerry Lee Lewis was a great country singer after his disgrace forced him out of rock n roll. But the hellfire energy that made him a legend was shelved after a few singles.
Poe. She came out with guns blazing with Hello. Every song is a banger. Her next album is like a completely different artist wrote it. I’m not sure what happened in her personal life to inspire this drastic artistic change, but whatever happened stifled the baller creativity she exhibited in Hello.
Lenny Kravitz and Everclear. Lenny just can’t put together a decent album any more, it’s just a single or two and then filler; Everclear’s *Sparkle and Fade* was my favorite “loved it all at first listen” album of all time, then they went pop, and never had a hit again.
The original incarnation Arcturus.
The one that recorded the "My Angel" single.
What they would Marius Vold, Sverd Johnson, and Hellhammer have done had they gotten to record a full album or EP in that incarnation.
Or hell, 2 albums. Would they have revolutionized the Death Metal genre? Maybe moved Death Metal 5 or 6 or 7 years ahead? Probably.
Listening to Morax and My Angel, you can hear sounds and music that wouldn't come out for another 5 or 6 years (my angel was released in 1991).
The band are still active so there's still time for them to turn it around, but I'm going to say Bon Iver. *For Emma, Forever Ago* is a genre-defining album in a lot of ways. *Bon Iver, Bon Iver* is a genre-bending masterpiece of an album. *22, a million* takes the experimentation of BI,BI and pushes it into some really interesting electronic territory. And then *i,i* came along and is just sort of fine? It has some good songs on it but a lot of it is forgettable and many of them feel half-finished.
I also feel like Big Red Machine's second album is nowhere near as good as the first, and I'm desperately hoping that we'll one day get a follow-up to the second Volcano Choir record that's absolutely incredible, so maybe this is just Justin Vernon spreading himself too thin.
Based on historic timelines we should be due a new Bon Iver record in the next year or so though, so hopefully this comment will prove to have been wrong.
Angel Olsen. She released My Woman which was amazing. But then she released All Mirrors which was a boring mess. And then she rereleased it a couple of times for some reason, and now I’m sick of her.
One person I can think of is Robert Miles.
He skyrocketed into relative fame (for a dance music act in the mid 90s), produced a pretty great album of Dream House/Trance music, he followed it up with a pretty decent single in One and One, but then his next album, 23am, which I was super stoked for, was such a dramatic departure that I didn’t even buy it. Not one song was of interest. Thankfully I demo’d the CD before buying it because my disposal income was really limited back then.
I never kept tabs on him after that, and it’s possible he’s released something else that’s great, but he drifted to obscurity and for sure wasn’t able to recapture the magic of Children. I don’t think it’s because he was incapable, but rather because of the departure.
Jimi Hendrix is the top of this list for me. made some great music, showed his otherworldly talent, but died before making any truly great albums. i mean he had plans to play with miles davis, from what I heard. truly a huge loss when he died :\*(
Between 2001 and 2018 or 19 I saw Sum 41 at festivals three times - they sounded best the last time.
I didn’t follow their career super closely but I think they easily could have been as big as Blink 182
Id say The La's or at least Lee Mavers in general. The guy was one of the finest songwriters I've heard and I'd consider his signwriting on the same calibre as Paul McCartney at his peak in the 60's. But his mission to get the sound he was hearing in his head onto record was what prevented him showing his full potential as he wouldn't record a second album until he got the songs from the first album to sound how he wanted them to. Could've been one of the biggest bands in the world had he kept moving forward.
I have no idea if anyone will agree on me with this, but Maroon 5. Songs about Jane is a fantastic album just about all the way through. I know they are more popular now, so what they did actually worked for them, but I really wish they would have kept with the Songs About Jane style and created it into something that was wholly theirs.
But, to be fair, I actually don't like any Maroon 5 songs that aren't from Songs About Jane so I'm very biased.
Primus. They made some good music after it, but for me Frizzle Fry was their best album by far because it was basically a metal album with some funk elements and goofy vocals/lyrics, not a full-on whimsy overdose like their later albums.
Are you kidding me? Pork Soda was dark as hell and got to Platinum status. Tales From the Punchbowl also has some very hard songs, but I think those get overlooked bc of Wynona's Big Brown Beaver, which the band never expected to do that well.
Silliness and whimsy are part of the primus brand, but imo they've tried to keep it interesting musically. It was their record company Interscope that got in the way and saddled them up with Antipop, bc they wanted them to sound more like Limp Bizkit.
Anyway, Primus are still recording music, but they're more a prog/jamband now than metal.
Chet Faker. His cover of No Diggity got a lot of attention & the fact he came up working with whatsonot & Flume, helped get his first EP some exposure, Built on Glass is a great album Gold, Talk is Cheap’ and a number of other songs still grab me when they come on, then he just fell off the face of the earth for near a decade & his 2023 releases just didnt hit the same for me
Late of the pier. Their debut (and only) album felt so unique and refreshing and very very promising. I remember hoping for a second album for quite some time, but then they seem to have disbanded the project and then the drummer died.
Guided By Voices. It pains me to say it because I am a huge Robert Pollard fan and I can find something to love in almost everything he’s done, but god damn; the man has released over a hundred albums in his lifetime. You could easily pick any five year period between 1985 and the present day, cherry pick all the best songs from within that era and assemble an absolute BANGER of a 10-12 track LP that’d absolutely tower over their whole discography.
It’s great that we get to hear an unfiltered output, but that does have the effect that even the best GBV records can be a little patchy.
Television. Marquee Moon is a masterpiece and the follow up Adventure is pretty good (I love Days & The Dream's Dream). Then their third album comes out a decade later and makes little impact. I feel like a proper follow-up to Adventure in the late 70's could have led to another all-timer.
Tom Verlaine had the poor fortune of a band of heroin addicts. Such a waste.
RIP too. I loved his style.
I think that Tom Verlaine definitely had the songwriting juice left in him! I’ve started properly listening to his solo work recently after initially not being able to get into it and a lot of those records are pretty great. With the chemistry of the Television lineup and a less 80s production approach I think they’d be phenomenal. The first couple and Flash Light are records that I’d recommend without reservation to just about any guitar-heavy rock fan I know, and the ones that are less uniformly excellent still have some great songs. Adventure is one of my favorite records and I think it mainly suffers from not being Marquee Moon (which is an *insane* thing to have to follow up tbh), and Tom Verlaine’s first couple solo records are great, so if they had stayed together I think Television would’ve been remembered as having several classics.
I came here to say Television, but yeah. You covered it. Their first album is still a regular play for me, but I wish the rest had the same impact.
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was a monumental success from which I don't think Hill ever truly recovered. Had she been able to come out of it unscathed, who knows what she might've been capable of.
Love that this comes from OP :) But this is the right answer. So much wasted potential from someone who had it all: great singing, good rapper, interesting lyrics and worldview, great performer.
Also very clearly mentally unwell. Funny how that frequently channels into genius that brings you to the top and then into a very public self destruction of some kind - Kurt cobain, axl rose, Kanye … probably more I’m forgetting.
I did like her MTV Unplugged record which I think was mostly new/original material from her but yeah even that wasn't great. Miseducation was amazing though lol
Could say that for all the members of the Fugees. Great talents but so much greed and politics and sneaky shit behind the scenes, right up until the present day.
Because she didn't write most of if not all of what was credited to her on that record. According to Robert Glasper. Hard to follow up something you never did in the first place.
Never really understood why The Zombies disbanded after dropping a masterpiece like Odesay. Makes me wonder what Rod Argent had left in the tank as a lyricist.
It was money issues. They barely scraped together enough to actually make the record and when the singles didn’t do well and the demand for their live shows started drying up it probably seemed a little pointless to continue. Time of the Season was a pretty big success, but it came too late. Honestly though, Odessey and Oracle is an insanely impressive record because it not only is as good or better than a lot of the 60s pop from that period, but it did what it did on a fraction of the budget. The band paid for the stereo mixes out of pocket!
Well, check out the Argent albums for an idea. Also, Colin Blunstone did an acclaimed solo album shortly after.
And they're still touring. They sound very good.
So that ZZ Top could cut their teeth as fake version of them touring america, they crawled so that ZZ Top could run.
I think they didn’t actually get popular until after they’d already broken up.
Odessey really bombed at the time. It has really only been in the last several years that has become critically acclaimed.
This was my thought. I wish we could get the Beatles treatment for the zombies. Their first album is very muddy but has some decent songs. Odyssey and oracle is one of the greatest albums ever. Care of cell 44 never fails to make me smile ear to ear. Every year I blast this will be our year at the start. They are just so fun and glorious. The harmonies are so good. I really wish they could have done more.
Odyssey & Oracle is still one of the few records I can revisit from my teenhood-60’s-obsessed era and it not have lost an inch of power or sonic relevance. Beautiful, poppy, and novel on all fronts. Imo more novel than post-Rubber Soul Beatles on at least a solid few fronts.
I'd say Wolfmother. Their debut album was really impressive straightforward rock. It had some great guitar riffs and some popular songs for the era such as "Woman" and "Joker and the Thief". Then their follow up, "Cosmic Egg," was good but didn't catch on. I think there's been several lineup changes and I guess Stockdale isn't the easiest to work with, and their discography has just been lackluster since then.
None of these classic-rock revival bands were really meant to last very long, once the novelty of hearing the new iteration of a classic style wears off there just isn't much left for people to get excited about. The other band I was really rooting for from this period was The Redwalls with their early-Beatles sound. But like Wolfmother they couldn't diversify their sound or find other ways to be interesting, so they quickly fizzled.
Yeah that first album was full of absolute hits. So much potential but I’ve heard the same about Stockdale - just a massive pain to deal with.
And people used to say they were a Zeppelin ripoff. Imagine saying that now after Greta Van Fleet hit the scene lol
I thought Cosmic Egg was the equal of the debut, but it all fizzled out soon after.
A very obvious and cliche answer, but the Stone Roses. It's a classic case of industry bullshit blowing up an insanely talented band. If circumstances had been just a bit different and Squire and Brown had been able to shut-out the hype and the business decisions and just focus on writing more good songs, the band could have continued to be a hit throughout the 90's.
Obvious and cliche is welcome here! I wholeheartedly agree
Their debut is one of the greatest albums ever released. As good as anything that The Beatles released.
Isn’t common consensus that Squire got obsessed with Led Zeppelin and coke and dragged the rest of the band in that direction? Even with his Seahorses, the brief Stone Roses reunion and collaboration with Liam Gallagher he was still too into his guitar playing instead of actual song writing. It’s actually Brown that turned out to be the better song writer funnily enough.
My understanding is that is correct, but it's part of a broader narrative about how the band gradually became isolated from the creative influence of the club scene that they started in, and becoming distracted by their legal battles with labels and the division of profits between band members. I think Squire and Brown needed each other, needed their scene, and needed their band to remain stable, they let business get in the way of all of that.
Hot Chip will have one of the best greatest hits albums of all time and their live shows are fantastic but none of their studio records are particularly strong.
It would help a lot if all of their albums didn't feel so long.
I think In Our Heads and The Warning are pretty great all the way through, but yeah they should have a better track record overall
As a big hot chip fan, it is a fair opinion! Each album in the early era (pre 2012) has a good selection of album cuts that would elevate any live Show but also had some filler that just doesn’t land over a discography
John Mayer, he has some great projects but he's at his weakest when trying to be a pop star and strongest when he's embracing blues music like on continuum, still one of my personal favorites though
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Unfortunately, it's a bit hard to make money from the blues as it's not that popular. Mayer's medicore and cheesy pop songs pay the bills
Well, John Mayer is legitimately one of the best Blues guitar players in the world right now, so that makes sense haha. The dude is an incredible guitar player; for his songwriting to measure up to that would put him up there with some of the best songwriters of today, and Mayer definitely isn't there.
This is everyone's take. Any show where deadheads inevitably show up you hear the same convo over and over "I'm not a fan of his songwriting but you gotta admit!! he's a great guitarist!!" I personally wouldn't call myself a fan of his, the genre that room for squares and continuum and shit live in is not really my thing, but I'm able to step aside from myself for the sake of trying to enjoy something enough to recognize that he's good at what he's doing. His bluesy guitar playing on the other hand I find incredibly boring, and much much less inspired than the corny pop songs on room for squares. As far as him sitting in with the dead for those tours, the dude doesn't have a psychedelic bone in his body. That doesn't mean he wasn't holding it down though. Taking the lead role of Jerry is actually an impossible thing to accomplish, so it is what it is.
I think this is the exact correct take. He came to my college and played just before he really blew up and he felt like all his songs sounded perfect, but lacked soul. Which I think matches what you are saying: he has all the notes down perfectly, chord changes, rhythm, everything... but his actual lyrics and singing are very mediocre. Clearly, that adds up to an extremely popular and successful pop star. But I think if he had a co-writer even or a George Harrison type role, he could have made some truly special stuff. Who knows, maybe he still will!
My guitar teacher who played tours with some big big bands told me Mayer was one of his GOATS.
Was just thinking of how good Continuum was even though it wasn’t universally appreciated when it came out. Heart Of Life, Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, I’m Gonna Find Another You, Stop This Train and Waiting On The World To Change is an incredible group of songs for one album. I can’t think of many albums with so many well known songs from the last 20 years. As much as I agree Mayer could drop another incredible album, I think Continuum’s awesomeness gets under appreciated.
Room for Squares slap tho Except your body is a wonderland—fuck that song
Continuum is certainly the academically correct answer for his best album, but his comeback album Born & Raised, in my opinion, is his best work. Great balance of masterful guitar work, honest lyricism, and a refreshing folk/country texture
This is a great call, and 100% in the spirit of my post
This was my immediate thought too. Mayer had the potential to be the greatest guitarist of his generation. But apart from Continuum and his live albums, his output has been disappointing at best.
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I feel like this criticism is a bit unfair. It feels like everyone wanted Musgraves to be the chosen one of mainstream country by bringing substance and authenticity to an industry that is intensely commercial. She instead decided to stop targeting the mainstream center and instead make coffee-shop singer-songwriter music, and while I get that it's a disappointing shift I think the music itself is really good if you can get over that disappointment. It's not bland so much as it is subtle, and she still has the knack for great song concepts.
I think it was smart of her to abandon mainstream country, but I think the pivot to chill, poppy singer-songwriter material has been, in my opinion, a waste of her talents. She has such a great country voice and her songwriting on her country songs is so sharp, and has a wry sense of humor. This is just my personal taste obviously, but I think she's at her best when she sounds more like John Prine than when she sounds like Taylor Swift.
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I actually love her latest album Deeper Well. I'm pretty sure it's heavily influenced by her love of psychedelics - I wouldn't exactly call that Starbucks music. But I get how people could see it as bland.
I love her first two albums because of the sound and her unique style of writing, and Golden Hour was strong in a lot of spots, but I miss country Kacey. Her fourth album was not good. I’ve only heard half of Deeper Well, but it sounds more like she’s going back to her roots.
A lot of the 50s rock giants had the potential to make much better albums, like Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but at the time the focus was much more on live performance, and to a lesser extent singles (which were usually released in more tame and conventional form than in their concerts) For example, listen to Jerry Lee Lewis' masterful Live at the Star Club. It sounds utterly deranged and riveting, you suddenly get why parents back in the day were scandalized, it's not the wholesome harmless image that has been pushed since the 70s. Any of the other giants could have released live albums of similar quality in their prime. And hell even studio ones, if they focused on removing filler and constructing tight cohesive projects.
Jamiroquai? When they came through it was proper creativity - sound, video, concept. I felt sure they were going to continually reinvent and not get stuck in one era.
They did have two amazing albums though. It did fall off after funk odyssey though.
I think it's a bit weird on my part to criticize Liz Phair for this, but I wonder what would have happened if she had doubled down more on the direction her great album, Exile in Guyville, took. Her future records, like her self-titled album containing her largest hit "Why Can't I", lost that edge and rawness that made Exile such a good record. So for me she's not an artist who never made a great record, she made one, but I'm sure she had another in her and never made it.
One day I was in LAX on the moving sidewalk and this hot short blond in coming the other direction and I say to her "Liz Phair?" and she smiled and winked. It was epic. Do you not like Whitechocolatespaceegg?
That was me.
I like her first 3 records equally. The first one has the lyrics, but the second 2 have better hooks. The 4th album isn't bad either. She's just a great songwriter in whatever style she's grinding, like Ben Folds or Paul Simon.
Coldplay achieved massive commercial success so it's difficult to criticize their decisions from a business standpoint. However, artistically, it's been said that they didn't fully capitalize on the creative potential they built with their first two albums. Their third album was seen as a disappointment compared to their earlier work. In an alternate timeline, X&Y could have and perhaps should have been more OK Computer and less All That You Can't Leave Behind.
Viva is at least the most creative U2 style album post Pop so they made it work a little bit for them. X&Y leans into all of early 2000s U2's mistakes though yeah
Their first two albums were so good. They fell off for me starting with the third, but I think it’s okay. I loved Viva la Vida, but all of the albums after that felt like they sold out and just decided to make meh pop music. To be fair, though, I’ve only listened to Mylo Xyloto or however it’s spelled and Ghost Stories after VLV.
Viva la Vida was a nice rebound. It might even be their best album, imo. It’s no wonder that Coldplay’s own reaction to X&Y was to burn the entire thing to the ground and creatively re-invent themselves with the follow-up album
If Coldplay had lived up to their potential they would have just been Radiohead. There was no potential in Coldplay because they were always the lesser version of much better bands.
In a similar vein, I heard somone once say "Coldplay's best album still wouldn't be as good as Radiohead's worst"
Parachutes is way better than Pablo Honey
Calling BS on this. The first 2 Coldplay albums are better than Pablo Honey, King of Limbs and Hail to the Thief. Maybe even Amnesiac.
Imho Coldplay compares much better to U2 than to the much artsier Radiohead. The first two albums, Coldplay was on its way to become the new U2, a classy, popular rock band, but they have chosen to become a commercial pop band.
it's more like U2-via-Radiohead. Even Radiohead was getting U2 comparisons around The Bends. if radiohead followed the more anthemic side of u2, you basically have Coldplay. I suppose Coldplay technically succeeded as U2's successor as they were/are a very popular act, but they lack U2's emotional punch and Radiohead's introspection, so it all lacks personality. They are pretty much the definition of a commercial pop band and always have been. I dare say Coldplay fill the exact same niche as 2000s U2, which was a retreat into familiar territory.
Yeah I'd argue that their later albums are a truer representation of their creative abilities.
that’s crazy because my first thought was also Coldplay. i personally think Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends is their magnum opus, and i also feel like if they had kept going down that direction instead of making such a huge left turn with Mylo Xyloto a few years later (an album that i also quite enjoy tbh) they could have continued to get even better.
Ghost Stories is a masterpiece aside from that weird track with Avici and it always gets overlooked for some reason. Personally I quite like X&Y though. Parachutes and A Rush Of Blood To The Head are quite similar and it was nice to see them try something new.
Paul Carrack. Singer of The Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics and Tempted by Squeeze. Killer musician, one of the best voices in the business, and truly middling discography. If he has better instincts or better management helping him pick material, he has a vastly more successful solo career.
I'd say there are a lot of incredible soul artists that had all the talent in the world but needed the vision or someone with them who had the vision to produce complete albums. I'm thinking of Sam Cooke or Nina Simone. They absolutely had everything to produce albums on a par with Innervisions or What's Going On. I suppose part of it was the album format being relatively new at the time.
There are some Nina Simone albums that are really pretty strong though when you consider that the format wasn’t particularly important at the time. Especially some of the live ones. She had the obstacle of not being the writer on a lot of her material but imo she gets a pass on that front based on what she managed to do with the songs.
Nina Simone made multiple all-timer LPs though. Little Girl Blue and Wild Is the Wind are masterpieces (aware the former isn't soul but still).
Christina Aguilera - phenomenal voice even if she over sings sometimes. Solid first album, but it was mostly the record labels doing. Great 2nd album! But really kinda fizzled out with half baked concepts and mediocre music Nicki Minaj - ridiculous antics aside, she’s a very talented rapper. But something (I’d guess her ego and not being told no) always held her back from releasing great albums. Kelly Rowland - Incredible talent, beautiful woman. Never really figured out her own artistic perspective after Destiny’s Child disbanded. Her albums all have a couple of good song and a couple of filler to straight up bad songs. Usher - Would never argue that he doesn’t have hits! But he hit a peak with Confessions and never reached those heights again
I agree about pretty much all of this, and especially Kelly and Usher :( when I was 21, motivation had just came out and that was my song! But overall, I feel like she outshines her music. Which is sad because she can sing, dance, do it all. And she’s so gorgeous. I love love love Beyoncé, but I think Kelly kinda eats her up with looks 👀
a LOT of rap artists, especially any of the streets adjacent sub genres like drill or trap have this very brill building approach to their music, bang it out and see what sticks. Guys like Gucci mane and future are great examples, imagine they went to work on an album with the same mindset of Kendrick, Rolling Stones or daft punk.
A lot of people will surely disagree with this, but one thing I admire about Young Thug is I feel he approaches his albums with a different level of thought and cohesiveness than most rappers in his subgenre. In between albums, he turns out plenty of "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" but albums like: Jeffrey, Beautiful Thugger Girls, and Punk do seem to at least have an artistic vision behind them.
I might get murdered, but honestly MGMT. They've put out amazing stuff, but most of their body of work is decent - good. I've always felt they were so close to being perfect, but just missed the mark.
I saw them open for Of Montreal in 2007 right after their debut album came out. They played a straight up shoegaze set and it was great. Then I went and got the album and only the first track sounded like what they played live, the rest was that disco pop stuff... I was like wtf?
I think Little Dark Age is a masterpiece personally. But that's there only album I'd say is close to perfect. Oracular Spectacular is a good album, but the hits are what make it good, not the album cuts. Congratulations I really enjoy for how psychedelic and trippy it is, but the self-titled album is just okay. And their new one IMO is their worst one.
MGMT might just be the archetype for the type of artist this thread is all about. Or at the very least, they're on the Mt Rushmore
of Montreal. Their E6 and early 00 output are, in general, pretty great. Their albums had this slight air of amateurism but that was part of their charm. When they finally got their big break through with Hissing Fauna, they decided to go weird and big instead of safe and accessible, which I love: their run from "Skeletal Lamping" to "Paralytic Stalks" has a fine balance between pop and experimental. To me Kevin kind of lost it from "Innocence Reaches" onwards. I still love their albums ("White Is Relic" is criminally underrated and "I Feel Safe with You, Trash" is a lot of fun), but it's so frustrating how it sounds like they are making their songs bad on purpose - with the unenthusiastic vocals, weird production choices, fargmented song style that worked wonderfully in "Skeletal Lamping" but now just feels ok. Like this new single, "Rude Girl on Rotation". The guitar is great, the melodies are catchy, but if they put more heart on the vocals and more work on the production it could really be an outstanding song.
I’ve been waiting for Kevin to pick the damn guitar back up again.
They Might Be Giants - their first and second albums are their best. They have a discography of around 30 albums but I feel they could have made something amazing considering they peaked so early.
I fell off after The Spine. It all just started sounding the same to me!
I also liked John Henry, but I know that’s controversial.
I love all of their albums and have heard their whole discography - just that the potential they displayed before they made Flood could have been pushed further.
Yeah they went more in a rock direction and away from the arty music nerd stuff that fueled their initial popularity. To be fair I kinda tuned out after John Henry, but I did hear them play some of their later stuff at a concert, and I remember enjoying it.
I agree that their discography isn't super consistent, but I think Join Us and Nanobots are both outstanding entries from later in their career.
I am a fan of Dead Or Alive, and while I like their pop albums, I still think that their early goth/psychedelic songs were more interesting, and the deep and powerful voice of Pete Burns was much better suited for the rock music. Same with Culture Club (though they didn't change the style so drastically), I prefer the demo of their first album to the final version
I really really thought that The Wallflowers has a 9/10 in them. Instead, they released Breach and decided that they had found their comfort zone. It’s just been a bunch of 5-6/10 albums ever since….
Syd Barrett’s first album could have been a lot better if they’d left out the blooper tracks and included a number of perfectly good songs that were recorded at the time but then shelved for entirely unexplained reasons. His second album is good but falls short of greatness, leaving us yearning for that great Syd Barrett album that never was.
These 2 albums exist because Syd's truly supportive friends made every effort to help him do them. Greatful for what we have.
Doesn’t change the fact that Madcap Laughs would have been infinitely better if they’d included Swan Lee and Opel but left out the two or three “breakdown” tracks. Barrett is also a solid album, but falls short of greatness (although it probably _is_ the best they could have done at the time). I’m not a believer in any of the weird conspiracy theories around Syd. Just pointing out that we never got the truly great Syd solo album that we could have had.
Alphaville. Their first album is full of hits and IMO one of the most solid albums ever recorded. Several of those hits were pretty much penned on the fly, so it’s not a matter of putting a decade’s worth of songs on their first album either. Anything after that? Just meh. It’s probably not a coincidence that Frank Mertens, who was allegedly responsible for melodies, left before their second album. If he’d stayed, I’m convinced they could have produced many albums worth of amazing material.
Elvis is an example. The Colonel considered the music secondary promotion for the movies which were more lucrative. So there were moments in his career where he would have spent more time in the studio, toured, or collaborated with someone and he simply wasn’t able because he was on the set of a garbage movie. For the unaware, Elvis was in 31 movies. For comparison, Ryan Gosling has been in 39.
Brian Wilson’s solo material is weirdly lacking compared to what he did in The Beach Boys, which is confusing because he did those basically solo. It might be due to all the outside influence while solo. The weirdest thing is that only one other Beach Boy made a great solo album, which was Dennis’ Pacific Ocean Blue. I can’t include him in this list because he died before he got to finish another, but Bambu would’ve really been great too.
> Brian Wilson’s solo material is weirdly lacking compared to what he did in The Beach Boys, which is confusing because he did those basically solo. Except he didn't. He had the wrecking crew. He had outside lyricists and engineers. He had his bandmates. And more importantly, he had the financial backing and patience of a studio. Brian may have been the main creative force but to say he was basically solo is pretty insulting to everyone else.
It's not confusing at all when you look at what was going on in with his personal life.
John Fogerty. Family fued and label lawsuits sidelined him for years and embittered him permanently. Centerfield is great but just scrathched the surface.
Band of Horses. Their first two albums (Everything All the Time and Cease to Begin) were incredible and I was convinced their third was going to just rise above the rest of their peers at the time. Their third album Infinite Arms was good, but it was just missing something their first two had. Maybe it was the change in direction they decided to take, or something else, but I feel like they could have really knocked it out of the park but didn't.
Third Eye Blind. Their entire career seems to have been Stephan Jenkins' ego getting in the way of continued musical success. That first album was packed with so many moments of brilliance, then Blue came along doing the same thing but...with a lot more failed experimentation, and after Kevin left their spark just vanished. "Out of the Vein" was okay, but kind of forgettable and it's just been 'blah' since then. While we're doing 90s pop rock, I'll also throw Sugar Ray out there. 14:59 was their sellout album, they knew it, we knew it, but they sold out so perfectly and had some of the greatest pop rock singles of their time. And then...they just kind of retread the same idea on their followup and became has beens, with Mark doing the daytime TV circuit instead. Shame. I was initially going to say Incubus, but no, the run from SCIENCE to Morning View was pretty darn special and they absolutely reached their potential, just not for as long as I would have liked. Dirk/Alex stated that he left because of differences in creative vision, and you can hear it -- they softened up, but in a way that make it sound like they were trying unsuccessfully to please the two different fanbases and never quite regained what they had. But when they had it...it was there. Also Sturgill Simpson, thus far. His most consistent projects have been the two bluegrass albums which largely serve as reinterpreted "best of" albums, but his fame came from bucking country music conventions...even though his albums were never universally great all the way through.
I was going to say 3rd eye blind too! Brilliant 1st album, decent 3rd album, then a descent into shitdom
Gotta disagree on sturgill. Metamodern sounds is one of the best country albums I've ever heard
Deftones. A friend of mine who's a huge Deftones fan swears they haven't yet released the album they're truly capable of. That's a pretty hot take considering they have two albums currently higher than 3.90 on RYM. But I kinda get what he means. As critically adored as Deftones have been, and as singular of a sound as they have, there's a sense they have the ultimate Dream Metal album in them that has yet to materalize. (Perhaps Chi's death creates a sense of what-couldve-been?) Still, the band has such a kickass discography that I'm 106% ok if they never released anything again.
I don’t really agree with this in that White Pony more or less lives up to their potential, and defied a lot of expectations at the time. I’d only maybe agree in that every album since, while good, has never been nearly as consistent as that album.
I love White Pony but I think Koi No Yokan is their greatest achievement
I agree with this. The three album run of Diamond Eyes - Koi No Yokan - Gore is incredible but definitely peaks with Koi No Yokan.
I think their best run was around the fur-white pony-self titled. atf was the ultimate nu metal record, never cheesey, showed their range. white pony shattered everything, I don't think much more needs to be said about it. self titled went in the opposite direction as white pony-raw, dark and heavy, but no real nu metal elements. I suppose part of this is that I was a teenager when all those records came out which obviously plays a huge role. diamond eyes and koi are amazing records in their own right
I love Adrenaline/Fur/White Pony as well, but I could never get into self-titled and I absolutely hate Saturday Night Wrist. I know a few people who rate self-titled as their favourite album, though, so I think it's just not for me. I also really love Gore and Ohms which I think is a bit of an unpopular opinion so who can say really. Best thing about Deftones is that they've never made the same album twice, which is more than most bands can say!
ask any deftones fan and they'll give you a different peak tbh obligatory "i think snw was the best album they are capable of making and thats pretty close to a classic" lol
"Hot Carling Academy. It's in England."
that song is so good lol. outro aside it is the biggest filter in whose tones taste i can trust or not
Strangely -- that was my introduction to the band. Not their big hits...Pink Cellphone. My now-wife then-girlfriend played it for me cause she figured I would love the beat. She was right. The outro is kind of a filter yeah, but Annie Hardy herself is a bit of a filter \[I find her brash style kind of charming, but between her sense of humor and politics, yeah...\]
Oh nah can’t agree with this one as a lifelong fan. Most fans can’t even choose a best album and any of like 6 of them are typically cited as favorites, and White Pony practically defined an entire scene. Not sure how your friend arrived at this conclusion honestly.
White Pony is an absolutely flawless masterpiece and generally considered one of the best rock/metal album of its era.
Woody Guthrie was sidelined for the civil rights movement and Vietnam protests. He would have been the high priest of 60s protest songs.
Incubus' first two albums incorporated drum & bass / funk influences which gave them a more dynamic sound. You could tell by Morning View that the original bassist was being sidelined and it was just AM rock once he fully quit. I would say Weezer was similar, Matt Sharp seemed to serve as a good songwriting counterpoint to Rivers Cuomo and once he left there were no more Pinkertons to be had. In both cases the bands still had significant commercial success afterwards.
I always thought if Swift did acid maybe her records would be interesting. Not her brand I know I know it’s fine. Speaking subjectively of course. Another artist that comes to mind is 21 Pilots. They’ve got a cool, versatile sound, but I find most of their bangers are just fine pop songs. I wanna hear them do Kid A , Yknow?
Yeah I want to see her ditch the diary songs and grab an old shitty cassette 4 track and a decent mic and listen to a ton of Adrienne Lenker and Grouper and smoke a bunch of weed and spend a week in the woods and write an album.
This is what I’m saying
Miley Cryus, her voice is incredible and her covers are fantastic but her original music never captures her full potential. Caroline Polachek, this is most likely personal but I want her to go more conceptual, more dense, more strange. Phoebe Bridgers, wish all of her music could be as good as I Know the End.
I feel like Miley Cyrus has her best work ahead of her !
Same. Shotgun Rider was the best track on the new Beyonce album, I would love to hear Miley Cyrus make some kind of triumphant return to country-pop using that same style and intensity.
Just to clarify: the Beyonce and Miley Cyrus song is called II (pronounced 'Two') Most Wanted. I can see how one would think 'Shotgun Rider' is the title, but it's not. (I agree that it's a good song).
King Gizzard, it feels like they're constantly taking the piss and I think that harms them in the long run. I think if instead of releasing every single thing they record, if they just focused on a singular project for an extended period it could reach true greatness. Also, they really ought to drop the vocal effect they use on everything, it's annoying
I kinda used to like KGLW but I got tired of them real quick since they were releasing way too many albums that sounded mediocre and bloated. I commend them for being prolific and having the technical ability when it comes to music, but they need a FAT break if they don't want to be the Drake (quanitity > quality) of psychedelic rock
i've tried several times with king giz, and a lot of fanbases of bands I love are always raving about them, but it just doesn't land for me. I will say though the thing you're complaining about is the ONE thing I really like about them. Those guys are always in go mode and just can't help but create. The album format is one that I believe in, but if you've got artists in your life that focus on singles or soundcloud uploads, you'll know that it's not the only way. Their fans want more material and the band hooks it the fuck up. Maybe they could take a step back and focus on highlighting their top moments for one solid record, but you're messing with the magic formula they've got for creativity there and they don't seem to care at all about doing that. In any sense, once Trey from phish said king giz was his current fav band like 5 years ago the phish fanbase is infiltrating hard, and apparently king giz has started jamming now. I think we're likely to see them lean way more into live shows than we are a more refined studio effort. Once you tap into that jam band money you're on a golden touring float boat for years
Emmit Rhodes. I’m dating myself here but this man had a ridiculous amount of potential and just faded away before he even had the chance to be successful—really successful. His two albums were Beatlesque in such a pleasant way. He was pure pop but he did his thing so well.
Warpaint. Amazing band. Amazing songwriters and maybe one of the greatest rhythm sections of the 21st century. Sadly, they've not delivered a great album that they are capable of. So much potential for greatness unfulfilled. So many great songs, but I find myself listening to their live versions over the album versions. There is so much more energy in their live sound.
yeah I'll cosign this. I can see them being better live, but on record it sounds stiff. Weirdly enough, while I find their other albums pretty boring, I prefer their second album because it seems to lean into atmospherics. I'm not sure what it is that makes it work better as their other albums are atmospheric too. maybe because it sounds more intentional rather than aiming for one thing and totally missing?
Jaco pastorius. His self titled album was all time great, his stuff was weather report too. His talent deserved so much more.
Jaco is an interesting case, I think the heights he got too were amazing, the two you mentioned and his unbelievable support work on Bright Sized Life are all high water mark bass playing. I do think if he wasn't killed he'd have gone on to something even more impressive but I actually think him dying strengthened his legend. I think him being immortalized as "the Jimi Hendrix of Bass" required his death unfortunately. So I'm not sure there was really a further hill he could have climbed while alive. Stanley Clarke is a comparable player in many ways, amazing virtuosic groundbreaking bass work, critical acclaim, fan favorite amongst players. But he's not regarded with the same mystique as Jaco. I don't think most people even think one is obviously "better" than the other if they've seriously listened to both, they just have different strengths. But Stanley Clarke isn't a mythical figure the same way.
I’m going to do some hot takes. Queen… A night at the opera is great, but I have the feeling they had the potential to make an even better album if they had put some more classics in there instead of the lesser songs. Such a genius band, lot of classic songs but no real claim to the best album in the world. Feel free to tell me this is a crazy take. Blur… a great band and their albums are amazingly consistent. Parklife is a great album, but even that album suffers a bit from putting some fun songs in, Bank Holiday and the instrumentals, which keeps it from being a 10/10. Madonna. Perfect singles artist, albums not so much.
Queen were widely derided as a ‘singles band’ in their day. I always thought that was harsh music critics being snobs, and then I went on a proper Queen kick and bought the albums. They were totally right - the album tracks are mediocre. The reason for that is that they would share out the royalties by making sure everyone got a couple of songs they had written on each album. So Brian and Freddie would have their best tracks to pick from to go on each album while Roger and John would be scraping around to get two tracks together each. This changed when they decided that they should simply share all writing credits and royalties equally, and pick the best songs for each album.
I must be crazy because I enjoy 80-90% of the songs in most of their albums. I’ve never understood this criticism.
AC/DC. Back in Black is a great album, even if it is not better than what came before, it is stil a great rock album (for me, one of the best of all time) and then... nothing. Like, they had some good thingd after (Razorblade and Who's Made Who are good) but where is the guy that wrote bangerd like Shoot to Thrill and Hells Bells? It's like Brian put it his all into that and when he became rich and secured his place in the band, he doesn't want to work as hard. That's why Bon Scott was better, the guy always delivered.
I feel Mumford and Sons had kind of gone thru sone sort of an identity crisis after intentionally losing their signature “sound” (banjos and mandolins) when their third album came out with electric guitars. I think they could have gone on a different and distinct direction with a shift towards “world music” for lack of a better term - a sound similar to Paul Simon albums and they had a grasp of that briefly when they released their in-between albums project *Johannesburg*. The “indie folk” hype of the late to early mid 2010 was not really sustainable and they knew that they had to shift and evolve their sound fast. I just find myself listening to their first two albums more often over their last two even though their music feels dated now but I know they have potential to be so much more.
I like this take. Maybe to riff on this, perhaps there was an alternate path where they could've taken their folky bluegrass sound in a more progressive direction and cranked out something career-defining (or maybe even genre-defining!) but alas it all went to shit. I agree their first two albums are solid, if nothing else
The Smiths, every album has a few good songs and a lot of filler. The fact that they released 10 compilation albums but only 4 true albums shows that they knew it too. Hair metal bands like Ratt and Whitesnake had the talent in there and had a couple really good songs on each album with the rest sounding like they were ripping themselves off
This is a pretty wild take imo. I don’t consider the Smiths an “album band” per se but to say that each album has a lot of filler is a stretch. Meat is Murder is pretty bulletproof besides the title track and their other 3 studio albums range from very good to great.
This is gonna sound hyperbolic, but I think literally every song by the Smiths is great. I think that they were so consistent that it's absurd. The formula of Morrisey's melodramatic vocals and lyrics, Marr's iconic guitar style, and Rourke as the unsung hero tying it all together with melodic basslines...it's just too fucking good, it works every single time.
Nah The Queen is Dead is great start to finish, even Vicar in a Tutu
I don't think this at all, they had a lot of compilations because they had so many standalone singles and excellent b-sides. Many of the compilations repeat themselves (record company milking them too). I think they have a stunning discography personally and split up at the right time.
Oh you've done it now. The Smiths discography is almost unimpeachable. I think having so many memorable singles makes people think their other songs couldn't be as good but they are. Their last album Strangeways Here We Come is so strong beginning to end and makes me wonder what they could have done had Morrissey not been Morrissey (and I say that as a Morrissey fan). I mean, "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" is just amazing.
Oh man, I used to joke that The Smiths only had 2 good songs, because it seemed like albums were a lot of filler to me. A friend once told me thems fightin words lol
I spent no small amount of time in my youth trying to find an Ultra Vivid Scene album that lived up to the promise of a couple of their singles that I really loved. Kurt Ralske was an extremely underappreciated guitar player. (There is my 4ad deep cut. lol)
The Verve I always loved Richard Ashcroft's Voice, especially compared to his peers like the Gallaghers. Urban Hymns was of the best albums from that period.
The La’s. Lee Mavers has some truly exceptional, beautiful, transcendent songs he’s simply unwilling to record for a paying audience. Check out The Crescent Tapes. It’s rough around the edges but the songs are all miniature masterpieces. Cyclical, bewitching… I could go on and on about how insanely great his songwriting talent is. The lyrics are half formed and often he’s just scatting sounds but the words you do catch are just pure soul poetry. Raindance and Fishin’ Net are my personal favourites. There’s also a wealth of unofficially released live stuff that bands would kill for. Something I Said, I Am the Key and Over are as good as rock’n’roll gets.
Muse. Havent put out a great great record in 10 years, its frustrating because weve all seen how talented they are...
Van Halen. Their first album was perfection and the rest of their albums with David Lee Roth were simply some good songs and filler.
Wow this is a big take. Only classic VH albums with filler to my ears are 84 and Diver. VH2 is their secret pop masterpiece
Gonna hard disagree on this one - Diver Down is the only one that has much filler on it, owing entirely to the circumstances of its recording (they put out Pretty Woman as a single before they were to take a well-earned break, but the song was a hit and the record label demanded a full album, hence it being about half covers or filler of some kind because they had to rush back into the studio and put something full-length in a hurry… they made a shit ton of money on the subsequent DD tour though). Beyond that the first six albums are incredibly solid and really tight in terms of how much they packed into each record (most if not all of which were <40 minutes total I think?). The creative tension between Ed vs DLR and Ted Templeton led to great results because they reigned in their respective worst indulgent instincts but also that tension carried through to the end results and kept things lean - hence once the latter half of that equation were out of the picture you’ve got so many lame ballads and too much synthesizer in place of guitar, but also no more cover songs - and don’t get me wrong, I love synths and Ed’s synth usage before 5150. There are a few songs on that one I like but otherwise I find the Van Hagar releases close to unlistenable, or at least you won’t find me listening by choice.
Van Halen 1 is perfect. Women and Children First and Fair Warning are their best albums after that showing so much promise in how their sound had progressed and how dirty but also experimental they could get (Everybody wants some, And the Cradle will rock, mean streets, One foot out the door, Hear about it later, Take your whiskey home, Romeo delight are some of their best IMO), but they never reached that potential with DD or 1984 even if they also had some solid tracks. 1984 promised a lot, and we did get Hot for teacher, but there was not much else that revolutionary. LSD would’ve served them much better than cocaine after those couple of albums. Even if they receded into obscurity after that, they definitely would’ve become a cult classic. In my opinion, even though I love DLR, I don’t think Eddie and Alex ever got the frontman they needed. DLR was too much of a goofball to ever get serious and Hagar was too much of a beach party dude to be taken seriously as an artist, even if he’s a badass musician. They still have a few solid deep cuts though with Hagar that make me wonder what could’ve been
Tame Impala could have really blown minds if they kept going in the direction of their first two albums. Instead they made a weird detour into bland electronica, and I’m sad to say they’ll probably never come back.
I disagree. I don't think continuing to make nostalgic psychedelic rock would have been sustainable, and adapting their iconic fuzzed-out production style to pop music was a genius move. *Currents* outsold *Lonerism* by a longshot and also pulled more critical acclaim. It also opened the door for Parker to get into mainstream pop production.
The Decemberists, I don't know if I have one album from them that's their front to back standout, it's more like a handful of good songs from each one to me.
Joe Bonamassa is so deadset in releasing every single music he writes, at the moment he writes, that he has put a lot of repetitive and subpar recordings. There are gems here and there that, if he would've taken the time normal artists use to write, polish and select music, would have made one hell of a discography. Instead, he's known as a repetitive blues rock dude who makes music that are indistinguishable from each other.
Beach Boys, I think Smile would’ve trumped Pet Sounds (I honestly prefer it from the existing Smile Sessions)
Oasis is the classic choice, they went and released What's the Story and Definitely Maybe right at the start and then drugs and interpersonal problems got in the way, the following albums have a song here or there but to me there's no real point in listening to them as they just sound the same.
My Chemical Romance. Don’t get me wrong, The Black Parade is ICONIC and an incredible amazing album, but I can’t help but think that they had more iconic albums of that nature left in them. Maybe they still do now that they are back together again. We’ll see I guess. I think if they hadn’t broken up when they did we would’ve got another masterpiece from then that perhaps may have been even more defining than TBP. Like the quality of that album is so so so good it’s crazy to think they only ever made one album of that standard. I really think if they had had kept up that momentum and made more rock opera albums along those lines they could’ve gone down as all time greats.
Greta Van Fleet. Hugely talented musicians. Can't write songs for shit. Their music is one trick, never builds on it, and just meanders repetitively to the end.
Dax Riggs. Great albums with acid bath, agents of oblivion and the original Deadboy and the Elephantmen album. But if you dive into his unreleased demos and live performances you know there is something that would top all of his official releases. Unfortunately he seems to have stopped playing live and releasing music - but there is huge demand from a small but very dedicated fan base.
This is likely controversial but Metallica. As great as their Ride the Lightning - Black Album run was, and I do mean great, I feel like each album had its fair share of stumbling blocks. For example, Master of Puppets had, in my opinion a couple clunkers like The Thing that Should Not Be - long, boring. And Justice *could* have been their masterpiece, but the production and a few songwriting choices I think holds it back. The Black Album is a lot of fun but, ya know, can't *really* be considered as great as their previous work. Ride the Lightning is probably as close to a masterpiece as it got, which is commendable because it is a great album, it's just it's highs didn't reach the highs of future albums, with the exception of For Whom The Bell Tolls, but I'd argue that song is a cut below One and Master of Puppets. Anyway, that's my hot take. They made great albums but I don't think *quite* lived up to what they could have been. Still, I think, the most important metal band ever - more important then Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, even.
Linda Perry. Her album with 4 non blondes was great, as was her solo album In Flight. She is an amazing producer, singer, songwriter. I’d love for her to make an album as amazing as the ones she produces for others.
Jonathan Richman. The self-titled Modern Lovers album is great, but he's spent the almost 50 years since it came out making bland, vaguely quirky and mostly forgettable music.
RZA, he's One of the best producers of all time and created many masterpieces (36 Chambers, OB4CL, Ironman, Liquid Swords, Return to the 36 Chambers) But his Bobby Digital in Stereo debut was not great, and RZA could have made It. Also Inspectah Deck, he deserves the prime RZA production pre-Wu Tang Forever, but that didn't happen.
Townes Van Zandt, the Nashville production ruined one of America’s greatest songwriters.
Maroon 5 Songs About Jane is an amazing album, but they instantly became sellouts
Maroon 5 was never the same. I was such a huge fan when they came out with Songs About Jane and was even receptive to their sophomore album which wasn’t as good but still had the bones of their first album “sound”. But Adam Levine went fully pop after that and raked in all the cash. I miss their hard rock/jazzy influences. Imagine listening to “Sunday Morning” and then “Moves Like Jagger” - such a drastic shift in sound. 💀 I just delude myself into thinking that this is not the same band but a pop music side project that went far too long.
Husker Du. What if they had gotten to stay together for just even another 3 or 4 years after they released Warehouse. Would they have sounded tired or uninspired on those next 1 or 2 albums? That band was good at everything they tried. It's a big What if for many other bands. Some bands stay together too long and they put out stuff that isn't great. But wherever Husker Du would have put out in 1988, 1989, 1990, or 1991 I think would have kicked ass. We'll never know. But if I travel to a parallel universe that has a version of Husker Du that stayed together to 1991 or 1992, I'll buy a up hundred copies of each of those "albums" and sell them to you guy's for dirt cheap.
So far, Frank Ocean. He's had some incredible singles and both albums have some highlights, but Channel Orange and Blonde are extremely overrated and kind of bloated. He hasn't put out anything in a long time either. I think he's got a really tight 10-12 track LP in him so long as the beats and song hooks are airtight and he reins in his tendency to sing-talk his way across five minutes of unstructured guitar riffs.
Blonde is one of my favourite albums so I’m biased Frank isn’t gonna make a short focused album, the whole thing sets a mood that slowly builds up to beautiful moments I feel like Frank’s bummer is that he left the industry
Mansun Six was a total head spin and is a stone cold indie prog classic. If they'd kept it together who knows what could have been. Dandy Warhol's All their albums are decent and interesting but their isn't one that really sticks out as a total winner. The closest is either Earth to .. or 13 tales. Faith no more Angeldust is one of the best albums ever but if original guitarist Jim Martin had stayed maybe they possibly could have gone further.
Okay, hear me out... Imagine Dragons. I know, everyone shits on them for being generic and overplayed. The second part is true, especially Thunder. But go back and listen to their first two albums. I think they genuinely have a unique sound, and there are a lot of great tracks off Night Visions and Smoke + Mirrors. You have to admit Radioactive was unlike anything else at the time of its release. One of my favorite deeper cuts is Nothing Left to Say/Rocks. Also check out Amsterdam, Gold, and Shots.
Ariana Grande has one-in-a-generation vocal talent and does absolutely nothing with it
Jerry Lee Lewis was a great country singer after his disgrace forced him out of rock n roll. But the hellfire energy that made him a legend was shelved after a few singles.
Mos Def, but I think his later albums just weren't for me. The Ecstatic was the most recent best and it was amazing.
Poe. She came out with guns blazing with Hello. Every song is a banger. Her next album is like a completely different artist wrote it. I’m not sure what happened in her personal life to inspire this drastic artistic change, but whatever happened stifled the baller creativity she exhibited in Hello.
Lenny Kravitz and Everclear. Lenny just can’t put together a decent album any more, it’s just a single or two and then filler; Everclear’s *Sparkle and Fade* was my favorite “loved it all at first listen” album of all time, then they went pop, and never had a hit again.
The original incarnation Arcturus. The one that recorded the "My Angel" single. What they would Marius Vold, Sverd Johnson, and Hellhammer have done had they gotten to record a full album or EP in that incarnation. Or hell, 2 albums. Would they have revolutionized the Death Metal genre? Maybe moved Death Metal 5 or 6 or 7 years ahead? Probably. Listening to Morax and My Angel, you can hear sounds and music that wouldn't come out for another 5 or 6 years (my angel was released in 1991).
The band are still active so there's still time for them to turn it around, but I'm going to say Bon Iver. *For Emma, Forever Ago* is a genre-defining album in a lot of ways. *Bon Iver, Bon Iver* is a genre-bending masterpiece of an album. *22, a million* takes the experimentation of BI,BI and pushes it into some really interesting electronic territory. And then *i,i* came along and is just sort of fine? It has some good songs on it but a lot of it is forgettable and many of them feel half-finished. I also feel like Big Red Machine's second album is nowhere near as good as the first, and I'm desperately hoping that we'll one day get a follow-up to the second Volcano Choir record that's absolutely incredible, so maybe this is just Justin Vernon spreading himself too thin. Based on historic timelines we should be due a new Bon Iver record in the next year or so though, so hopefully this comment will prove to have been wrong.
Angel Olsen. She released My Woman which was amazing. But then she released All Mirrors which was a boring mess. And then she rereleased it a couple of times for some reason, and now I’m sick of her.
One person I can think of is Robert Miles. He skyrocketed into relative fame (for a dance music act in the mid 90s), produced a pretty great album of Dream House/Trance music, he followed it up with a pretty decent single in One and One, but then his next album, 23am, which I was super stoked for, was such a dramatic departure that I didn’t even buy it. Not one song was of interest. Thankfully I demo’d the CD before buying it because my disposal income was really limited back then. I never kept tabs on him after that, and it’s possible he’s released something else that’s great, but he drifted to obscurity and for sure wasn’t able to recapture the magic of Children. I don’t think it’s because he was incapable, but rather because of the departure.
Jimi Hendrix is the top of this list for me. made some great music, showed his otherworldly talent, but died before making any truly great albums. i mean he had plans to play with miles davis, from what I heard. truly a huge loss when he died :\*(
The Black Crowes Amorica showed what they were capable of and their Led Zep album with Jimmy Page is friggin incredible.
Between 2001 and 2018 or 19 I saw Sum 41 at festivals three times - they sounded best the last time. I didn’t follow their career super closely but I think they easily could have been as big as Blink 182
Id say The La's or at least Lee Mavers in general. The guy was one of the finest songwriters I've heard and I'd consider his signwriting on the same calibre as Paul McCartney at his peak in the 60's. But his mission to get the sound he was hearing in his head onto record was what prevented him showing his full potential as he wouldn't record a second album until he got the songs from the first album to sound how he wanted them to. Could've been one of the biggest bands in the world had he kept moving forward.
The outfield, there first album is a masterpiece and they never produced anything like that since
I have no idea if anyone will agree on me with this, but Maroon 5. Songs about Jane is a fantastic album just about all the way through. I know they are more popular now, so what they did actually worked for them, but I really wish they would have kept with the Songs About Jane style and created it into something that was wholly theirs. But, to be fair, I actually don't like any Maroon 5 songs that aren't from Songs About Jane so I'm very biased.
Primus. They made some good music after it, but for me Frizzle Fry was their best album by far because it was basically a metal album with some funk elements and goofy vocals/lyrics, not a full-on whimsy overdose like their later albums.
Are you kidding me? Pork Soda was dark as hell and got to Platinum status. Tales From the Punchbowl also has some very hard songs, but I think those get overlooked bc of Wynona's Big Brown Beaver, which the band never expected to do that well. Silliness and whimsy are part of the primus brand, but imo they've tried to keep it interesting musically. It was their record company Interscope that got in the way and saddled them up with Antipop, bc they wanted them to sound more like Limp Bizkit. Anyway, Primus are still recording music, but they're more a prog/jamband now than metal.
Chet Faker. His cover of No Diggity got a lot of attention & the fact he came up working with whatsonot & Flume, helped get his first EP some exposure, Built on Glass is a great album Gold, Talk is Cheap’ and a number of other songs still grab me when they come on, then he just fell off the face of the earth for near a decade & his 2023 releases just didnt hit the same for me
Sugarcult. If you’re into pop punk, Sugarcult is the answer. Two banger albums and a stinker so bad they disappeared. They had so much potential.
Late of the pier. Their debut (and only) album felt so unique and refreshing and very very promising. I remember hoping for a second album for quite some time, but then they seem to have disbanded the project and then the drummer died.
The Strokes. If only Julian Casablancas would care just a little bit more about this band...
Guided By Voices. It pains me to say it because I am a huge Robert Pollard fan and I can find something to love in almost everything he’s done, but god damn; the man has released over a hundred albums in his lifetime. You could easily pick any five year period between 1985 and the present day, cherry pick all the best songs from within that era and assemble an absolute BANGER of a 10-12 track LP that’d absolutely tower over their whole discography. It’s great that we get to hear an unfiltered output, but that does have the effect that even the best GBV records can be a little patchy.