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 recorded 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 well. Tear together ,, Radiohead-Army.)
The most disappointing albums of all time (2): The Rolling Stones – “Their Satanic Majesties Request”
At the height of the psychedelic movement, months after the Beatles with the world Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had astonished, published the Rolling Stones Their Satanic Majesties Request. It is an extremely ambitious album.
They use them mellotrons, strings and African rhythms to outperform their competitors to psychedelics. There are very strong moments such as “She’s A Rainbow”, but also painfully mixed, like the album opener “Sing this all together”. The seconds after their end disappear from memory.
The album has some passionate defenders. But no serious fan argues that it is almost as brilliant as the early singles of the group or the work that followed in the course of the next decade.
“It’s not very good,” Mick Jagger told the 1995 Rolling Stone. ‘It is more of a sound experience than a music experience. There are two good songs on it: ‘She’s A Rainbow “and” 2000 Light Years from Home “. The rest is nonsense … I think we just took too much LSD. “