Recommendations of the Editorial team
The most disappointing albums of all time (34): Black Sabbath – “Technical Ecstasy”
A strand of success cannot last forever. And if you are a successful recording artist with a long career, the moment in which fans and critics are disappointed is inevitably disappointed.
This can be because a large experiment has not paid off as hoped for. The taste changed quickly. One is suddenly dismissed as relic of the past. That you have created something so bold and innovative that your genius will only be recognized in the coming years. Or that you simply produced a dud, due to a combination of physical and creative exhaustion. The unbearable stress of wanting to exceed yourself. And maybe the influence of certain chemical substances.
For really great artists, a disappointing album can only be a little bump on the way to a long, successful career. Bob Dylan has many albums that can confidently describe as “disappointing”. And they only made the successors more impressive and interesting. The same could be said of David Bowie, Madonna, Jay-Z, Stevie Wonder, the Rolling Stones and other artists whose careers include several generations.
Evaluation: also depending on the time
The American Rolling Stone has put together a list of the 50 most disappointing albums in music history. Some important reservations have to be made before different fan armies make plans to set fire to set fire. Or to let go of SWAT teams on our houses. We absolutely love some of these albums. An album can be considered disappointing the moment it comes out. And later re -evaluated forever.
This has to do with the time and critical consensus at a certain point in time. And an album that is considered a B+/A- is still disappointing when it follows a series of A/A+albums.
In addition, a disappointing album would be viewed as a masterpiece by an incredibly talented artist such as Radiohead or U2 if it had been published by almost everyone else. (We made the decision to record “The King of Limbs” and “Songs of Innocence” here, but made it really difficult. But ultimately they recorded.)
(And if you storm our houses because we have picked up your favorite band here, you can at least do it during the day? It’s annoying when you storm in the middle of the night. “The King of Limmbs” is also damn good. Tear together, radiohead army.)
The most disappointing albums of all time (34): Black Sabbath – “Technical Ecstasy”
“Technical Ecstasy” is far from the worst album by Black Sabbath. (That should only come two decades later when the burned remains of the band merged with Body Count guitarist Ernie C for Forbidden.)
And it is not even the worst album in the original Ozzy Osbourne era. (This is the sultry “Never Say Die!” From 1978.) But it is the first album that realized that the metal gods, who remembered the world in a remarkably short time masterpieces like “Black Sabbath”, “Paranoid”, “Master of Reality” and “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, had no more ideas and were unable to do so, not to change musicals Adjust the climate.
Black Sabbath – “It’s Alright”:
The most disappointing albums of all time (34): Black Sabbath – “Technical Ecstasy”
They also sniffed mountains of cocaine, were distracted by legal and financial worries and could not see that the sneaky ballads “It’s Alright” and “She’s Gone” would not win new fans who were enthusiastic about emerging punk groups such as The Clash and the Sex Pistols.
To understand where the mistake was, listen to “Rock and Roll Doctor” that sounds like a lost KISS song. “I have to go to my rock-and-roll doctor,” sings Osbourne. “I have to see him, see him today/he will knock me around.”
The album ends with “Dirty Women” on a strong tone, but the rest is just filling material that would never have been possible for a Black-Sabbath album a few years earlier.