We’ve all had that feeling before. Someone mentions a classic album that you should love, but deep down it really pisses you off because:
A) You don’t understand it.
B) You think it sucks.
Recently The Guardian asked some notable people their opinion on the matter, and boy, they don’t hold any stops:
Artist/Band & Album Hated:
Mark Ronson (producer) – Tupac Shakur All Eyez On Me
“Tupac wasn’t up there with Dylan – Dylan was a brilliant poet. Eminem is probably the Dylan of rap, whereas Tupac just sounded like he was whining.”
Wayne Coyne (Flaming Lips) – Nirvana Nevermind
“Nevermind had a poisonous, pernicious influence. It legitimised suffering.”
Luke Pritchard (The Kooks) – The Beach Boys Pet Sounds
“It’s got the worst sleeve of any major album, ever. Feeding time at the zoo? I don’t think so.”
Eddie Argos (Art Brut) – The Stone Roses The Stone Roses
“It makes my skin crawl. They spawned a new thug-boy pop culture.”
Ian Williams (Battles) – The Strokes This Is It
“Their music is post-9/11 party music because it came out that week and everybody wanted to dance.”
Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand) – Television Marquee Moon
“They’re a band who give guys who like 20-minute guitar solos an excuse. They were the Grateful Dead of punk, and I always hated all that jam-band stuff.”
Billy Childish (mover of British garage rock) – The Beatles Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
“It sounds like it took six months to shit out.”
Siobhan Donaghy (Sugababes) – Abba Arrival
“Nick Hornby may well say they’re part of the canon now, but I still don’t have to listen to them.”
Green Gartside (Scritti Politti) – Arcade Fire Neon Bible
“Solidly unattractive, texturally nasty, a bit harmonically and melodically dull, bombastic and melodramatic, and the rhythms are pedestrian.”
Tjinder Singh (Cornershop) – Pink Flyod Dark Side Of The Moon
“This album is a sort of lab experiment, put together by scarf-wearing university types.”
Craig Finn (The Hold Steady) – The Doors LA Woman
“The worst of the worst is the last song, ‘Riders on the Storm’: There’s a killer on the road/His brain is squirming like a toad – that’s surely the worst line in rock’n'roll history.”
Jackie McKeown (1990s) – The Smiths Meat Is Murder
“It’s absolutely treacherous to listen to…Meat Is Murder is Red Wedge music for sexless students.”
Peter Hook (New Order, Joy Division) – Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band Trout Mask Replica
“It sounded like somebody taking the piss.”
Ian Rankin (novelist) – The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground & Nico
“It’s one of the worst-produced albums of all time – put it on a modern hi-fi and you’ll think: this sounds like shit. It’s muddy, the volume comes and goes, the guitars are all out of tune, as is the viola. John Cale is one of the great Welshmen, but the viola on Venus In Furs sounds like a Tom and Jerry sound effect. And Nico’s voice is flat throughout – she sings English the way I sing German. Talk about looks being everything: she was a supermodel trying to sing in a rock band, but she couldn’t sing – she gave good dirge.”
Click the link below to get the whole scoop.
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August 16th, 2009 at 6:44 am
I disagree with the reviewer who panned the Doors’ “LA Woman” album. I believe it to be a fine record, considering the tension-filled circumstances under which it was recorded. It was a heavily blues-influenced disc with some moderate jazz and psychedelic sprinklings. Jim Morrison’s voice has deepened (or was it damaged?), but that quality fit the material fine. The major anamoly that I could find was that “L’America” seemed out of place on the tunestack, being a psychedelic chestnut that was ommitted from Antonioni’s “Zabriskie Point”. I also found it interesting that “Been Down So Long” and “Cars Hiss By MY Window” seemed oddly bereft of Ray Manzarek’s trademark keyboard sound, but was as effective had Howlin” Wolf performed them. I will agree that the album contained some banal lyrics, but overall the lyrical impact of the Doors’ works severely diminished after “Strange Days”.