Recommendations of the Editorial team
The most disappointing albums of all time (49): Radiohead – “The King of Limbs”
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 picked up 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 good. Tear together, radiohead army.)
49. Radiohead – “The King of Limbs”
Put your pitchfits away. So calm down all times. We do not say that “The King of Limmbs ” is not a sensational album. At the end of 2011 we chose the fifth best album of the year. And we stick to that all the years later.
But it followed “The Bends”, “Ok Computer”, “Kid A”, “Amnesia”, “Hail to the Thief” and “”In Rainbows “. It is one of the best 12-year series in the history of rock, maybe even the very best.
For this reason, the expectations were on The King of Limbs Extremely high. And the outstanding tracks “Lotus Flower”, “separator” and “Bloom” actually kept what they promised, but there are simply too many pieces such as “Feral” and “Morning Mr. Magpie”.
Radiohead – “Feral”:
In 2017, the producer Nigel Godrich told us how the album was created. “I thought: ‘Okay, let’s do an experiment for two weeks, in which everyone has a record player instead of playing guitar or drums or whatever,” he said. ‘And from this two -week experiment, damn six months. And that’s the whole story behind this album. ‘ It was a brave step, but it just didn’t pay off as everyone hoped.