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.)
Most Disappointing Albums of All Time (12): AC/DC: “Flick of the Switch”
AC/DC had plenty of reasons to be cocky in 1983. Not only had they survived the death of frontman Bon Scott in 1980, but they had become even more popular thanks to new singer Brian Johnson.
The first two albums under his leadership were mega-sellers Back in Black and For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)both of which were produced by Mutt Lange. For the third Johnson album, they dropped Lange and decided to produce it themselves.
This might have worked if they had another set of strong songs, but that just wasn’t the case. They also had to contend with guitarist Malcolm Young’s growing drinking problem and conflicts with drummer Phil Rudd, who was fired before “Flick of the Switch” was finished.
The result is a deeply unbalanced album. “AC/DC’s music has always been simple, but here it sounds underdeveloped and unmemorable,” wrote AllMusic’s Steve Huey. “Like the idiotic original title of the record, the completely generic one I Like to Rockperhaps suggesting, AC/DC seemed to be running out of ideas at an alarming rate.”