Recommendations of the Editorial team
The Most Disappointing Albums of All Time (44): Aerosmith – “Draw The Line”
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 (44): Aerosmith – “Draw The Line”
Aerosmith weren’t exactly casual drug users in their early days. But music still came first when they produced their first four albums.
That changed in 1977, when Aerosmith work on “Draw the Line” began. “Everyone was totally stoned,” singer Steven Tyler said on the band’s “Behind the Music” episode. “[Wir waren] as stoned as you can be. It really was days and nights. It was only a matter of time before we all killed each other.
Somehow they created two strong songs for Draw the Line – the title track and “Kings and Queens” – but the rest are just coke-soaked disasters. “‘Draw the Line’ is a truly terrible record, chaotic to the point of malfunction, and with an almost impenetrably dense sound that adds to the confusion,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Billy Altman in a brutally negative review of the album.
“It shows that these guys aren’t evil con artists selling stolen or leftover goods to the nation’s youth. If they were, this record would be much better than it is. Because almost anyone can repeat a formula. Instead, Aerosmith sounds like a band just starting out – very amateurs in fact.” (To be clear: This is very harsh, and Aerosmith would go on to release far worse records in the years that followed. This is just the first time that it was a real surprise that they were less than brilliant).