The Most Disappointing Albums of All Time (6): Bruce Springsteen – “Human Touch”
A winning streak cannot last forever. And when you’re a successful recording artist with a long career, there inevitably comes a time when fans and critics are disappointed with a new album.
This may be because a big experiment didn’t pay off as hoped. The taste changed quickly. You are suddenly dismissed as a relic of the past. For creating something so bold and innovative that its genius will only be appreciated in years to come. Or that you simply produced a dud due to a combination of physical and creative exhaustion. The unbearable stress of trying to surpass yourself. And perhaps the influence of certain chemical substances.
For truly great artists, a disappointing album can be just a bump in the road to a long, successful career. Bob Dylan has many albums that can safely be described as “disappointing.” And they only made the sequels even 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 span multiple generations.
Rating: Also depends on the time
The American ROLLING STONE has compiled a list of the 50 most disappointing albums in music history. There are some important caveats that need to be made before various armies of fans make plans to set our offices on fire. Or unleashing SWAT teams on our homes. We absolutely love some of these albums. An album can be seen as disappointing the moment it comes out. And later be reevaluated forever.
This mainly has to do with the timing and the critical consensus at a particular point in time. And an album that’s considered B+/A- is still disappointing when it follows a string of A/A+ albums.
Plus, a disappointing album by an incredibly talented artist like Radiohead or U2 would be considered a masterpiece if it had been released by almost anyone else. (We had a really hard time deciding to include “The King of Limbs” and “Songs of Innocence” here. But we ended up including them.)
(And if you’re going to storm our houses because we recorded your favorite band here, can you at least do it during the day? It’s annoying when they storm in in the middle of the night. Plus, “The King of Limbs” is damn good. Get a grip , Radiohead-Army.)
The Most Disappointing Albums of All Time (6): Bruce Springsteen – “Human Touch”
In the early 1990s, Bruce Springsteen fired the E Street Band. Moved to Los Angeles. And had his first child with his wife Patti Scialfa. He also began recording songs with session professionals such as drummer Jeff Porcaro and bassist Randy Jackson that reflected his newfound family happiness.
Some of them were truly outstanding, like “Human Touch” and “Real World.” But others were among the worst he ever considered worthy of publication, like “Man’s Job” and “The Long Goodbye.”
And the production was painfully outdated across the board. He published Human touch on the same day as Lucky Town, a slightly better album, and received the worst reviews of his career. The albums initially sold well. But just a few months later, they were piling up in second-hand CD stores.
Bruce Springsteen: “Man’s Job”:
For the first time in his career he had a failure. When he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, he acknowledged it with typical openness. “My father passed away this year. But I have to thank him. “Because what could I have written without him?” he said.
“I mean, you can imagine that if everything had been great between us, we would have had a catastrophe. I would only have written happy songs. And I tried that in the early 90s. But it didn’t work. The audience didn’t like it.”