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 (3): Bob Dylan – “Self Portrait”
Not long after he Bob Dylans “Self Portrait” had heard for the first time, the critic of the “Rolling Stone “Greil Marcus, the most famous for a review in the history of rock criticism: “What a shit?”
He reacted to a strange mix of cover versions, live recordings and originals that were spiced up with strings and background singers and make up the album. In 1984 the notoriously unreliable Dylan claimed that he intentionally did it bad to upset his fans and get some rest.
“I want to do something that you can do impossible with which you cannot identify,” he said. “You will see it, listen to it and say: ‘Well, then we’ll go to the next person.'”
The box published in 2018 Another Self Portrait It demonstrated that at that time he actually had a lot of great music. Which led to a slight re -evaluation of the original album. But compared to Dylan’s previous output from the 1960s was Self portrait Still a big disappointment.