So, name me albums with only one good song...

I think the whole debate in the original question is F***ing retarded. People who appreciate music want more than just one song... What many fail to appreciate is that an album is an artform in itself - a concept. With the availability of single tracks only, the album will die and we will never be able to appreciate this in the same way.

(Actually "Jacoranda" was not too bad a track. Hang on, I'd better start again...)

The Band: Eighth Wonder The Album: I've forgotten, because I sold it pretty soon afterwards!!! The track: "I'm Not Scared" (The rest of the album filled with not- very-good fluffy pop stuffs, definately not produced by the Pet Shop Boys)

And finally, I suppose in 10 years time, a lot of people will be able to nominate... The Band: Toploader!!! The Album: "Onka's Big Moka"!!! etc., etc., ... Well, that's if they still think "Dancing in the Moonlight" is a good song of course...

Old Fart!!!!

I'm trying to think of more albums. It's a lot of pop albums though, that release one single that goes mega mega and then people buy it and the rest of the songs are toss. If they weren't toss, we wouldn't have so many one hit wonders. I reckon, despite her having hits, Christina Aguilera is a good example, Genie in a Bottle is the only worthwhile thing she's done and it's a good thing MP3s exist otherwise I'd never hear the song cos I refuse to buy an album.

Listening stations help with this too but few people actually use the listening station - and have you noticed that the stations seem to have every album in the store EXCEPT the ones with the top 40 singles? Hmmm

The rest is the most unlistenable, turgid crapola I've ever had the misfortune to pay for. And I can't sell it because there's a huge fuck off scratch on it, to boot. Bastards.

x0x0

At one point I would have also listed _Our Little Secret_ by Lords Of Acid, but I listened to it again yesterday and it's completely wonderful. I must have been really cranky the last time I tried to listen to it or something...

Ah, here be that thread.

So by Peter Gabriel for "Don't Give Up."

Wild Mood Swings by The Cure for 'Treasure'.

Biggest one that pops into my head is that Harvey Danger record with "Flagpole Sitta"

Spooks: S.I.O.S.O.S.. "Things I've Seen" is one hell of a great rap single, but the rest of the album is completely and totally mediocre. The same good be said about that Gnarls Barkely album: "Crazy" is the only worthy tune on it.

X Post.

Marcello - but, but but Mercy Street and Red Rain! OK maybe not Red Rain, but Mercy Street!

I believe I said "Don't Give Up."

radiohead AMNEASIAC

Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon

the last missy elliot album, and the one before that (?)

Neil Young: Going Home (from Are You Passionate?)

I'm From Barcelona - Let Me Introduce My Friends (We're from Barcelona)
Camera Obscura - Let's get out of this country (Hey Lloyd..)
Barbarians - Are you a boy or are you a girl? (title track)

but, but but Mercy Street and Red Rain! OK maybe not Red Rain, but Mercy Street!
-- Guilty_Boksen

Guiity, I'm with you on this. I don't find "Don't Give Up" one of the better songs on that record either. Always've loved "Mercy Street" mo'.

"Flowers by the Door" from Change Today? by TSOL

"Get Well Soon" from Songs Not Get Married To by Reggie & the Full Effect

I love both of these songs, but never care to hear the rest of the record ever again.

I bought "Absolution" by Muse because I love "Stockholm Syndrome". And the entire rest of the album was unmitigated boredom. None of the other songs had the same urgency and they were all the bloody same.

david&david "boomtown" welcome to the boomtown

"Moonshot" from Buffy St. Marie - Moonshot

the kinks, phobia. has their greatest 80s/90s song "scattered," which coulda easily fit on (and overshadowed some of) muswell hillbillies. the rest of phobia is the kind of listless aor-rock they were too lazy (or incapable) of shaking loose from.

WTF people! So has "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time," in addition to all the others mentioned (and "In Your Eyes," which despite its oversaturation in pop culture is still a great track).

Yeah "In Your Eyes" is lovely.

"RED RAIN" guys.

more recent:
Luomo- Really Don't Mind (from Paper Tigers...urgh, the disappointment still overwhelms me)

and i know i have some older ones crawling around in the back of my head here, just need some time to bring them to the fore.

I like every song on So.

"Connecticut's For Fucking" by Jesus H. Christ and the Four Hornsmen of the Apocalypse (from their s/t debut album)

"South of Heaven" by Modest Mouse / Califone (on a compilation called I Love Metal)

"Thru and Thru" by Rolling Stones (from Voodoo Lounge - I suppose you could make arguments for a few other tunes on there, but I don't listen to them)

'Naive Song' from Mirwais 'Production' album

Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica ("Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes")

Bob Dylan "Knocked Out Loaded" ("Brownsville Girl")

Every track on "So" is lovely, with "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time" being the two weakest.

Red Rain and, yes, IN YOUR EYES are my favorites. I somehow never got sick of IYE, but then I've only seen Say Anything like once and don't listen to radio.

"Excursions in Ambience: Volume 3"

To quote from the amazon customer review:

BONUS FACT: This track, "No. 19" was before only accessible on the Aphex Twin album titled: Selected Ambient Works 2. But the CD doesn't have this track it's only on the VINYL IMPORT release (Warp records) - that's why it doesn't have a name because all of the releases on SAW2 were not named, they instead have pictures that he named them with, on the inside sleeve of the cd (like Mr. Eno used to do...)

So the only other release with this is THIS CD, "Excursions in Ambience 3". Get it & feel lucky you found this brilliant beautiful track! Excursions in Ambience: Third Dimension. Buy this for the Aphex Twin track!.

That one Spin Doctors album with the song about rockets that ain't in his head now or something.

Jethro Tull: "Thick As a Brick" and "A Passion Play"
Mike Oldfield: "Amarok"

Figures though. :)

So seems like the kind of album where if you like one song you'll like a few others. I can see the hating the whole thing too, but that "thing" that it does seems present in most of the songs.

The Wallflowers's "Bringing Down the Horse": One Headlight

(I second on Natalie Imbruglia and Neil Young's Are You Passionate)

"Moonshot" from Buffy St. Marie - Moonshot"

so untrue. "not the lovin' kind" is fuckin' AWESOME! and he's an indian cowboy in the rodeo is good too.

"Stadiums and Shrines II" from Sunset Rubdown Shut Up I Am Dreaming

P.S. MC I still like that whole Harvey Danger record.

Donovan "Fairytale" - Sunny Goodge St is approx. 100 miles in front of any other track.
Has anyone said "Pablo Honey" yet?

"Pablo Honey" OTM for those of us who love "Creep".

Nerf Herder, "Van Halen"

New Pornographers - Twin Cinema.
Sing Me Spanish Techno.

*I now expect to be hunted down and killed by someone here*

nah you're right, but the good song is "jackie dressed in cobras."

Jesse Camp & the 8th Street Kidz (or whoever)--"Summertime Squatters"
GBV's Do the Collapse--"Hold on Hope"
Marshall Crenshaw's something or other--"the Spell is Broken"
Wonder Stuff's Escape from Rubbish Island--"Another Comic Tragedy"
the Verve's whatever--"The Drugs Don't Work" (sue me) (well, sometimes I like the big hit)

The Walkmen - Bows & Arrows

...inevitably...

"The Rat"

(god i've just never been able to get into the rest of it whatsoever)

the last missy elliot album, and the one before that (?)

Camera Obscura - Let's get out of this country (Hey Lloyd..)

So wrong.

Right Said Friend - the first album has a good song called 'Swan' or 'Like a Swan'.

Fred that is.

I nominate:
Pretenders - s/t - "Brass in Pocket"

New Pornographers - Twin Cinema.
Sing Me Spanish Techno.

*I now expect to be hunted down and killed by someone here*

-- rockford, Monday, July 9, 2007 11:50 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

I would def. watch my back.

(and I'll be watching mine 'cause TC is far & away their least satisfying for me)

If you're only going to pick one song off of So and it ISN'T "This Is The Picture", you are really boring.

(PS: I fucking love that whole album.)

Also:
Blue Oyster Cult - Agents of Fortune - "Don't Fear the Reaper"

Wrong. Very wrong

Yeah.

Also, this Pretenders - s/t - "Brass in Pocket" = insanity.

:

Hey- if you guys want to listen to those albums all the way through, be my guest - but I know which cut my needle lands on whenever I pull them out. Not that the rest is awful - just not nearly as classic as that one great track.

Bab Brains - God of Love (Cool Mountaineer)

lol gay dad 'leisure noise'

Wild Life - "Bip Bop"

pretty tough question, cuz even the real clunkers (of anything i'd bother to listen to, of course) have at least a couple of good tracks on them.

maybe hot hot heat's 'make up the breakdown'. i think 'bandages' is good and couldn't give a fuck about the rest of them.

Animotion - Animotion

"Give My Regards To Broad Street": "No More Lonely Nights"
(Contains several great songs, but they are all pointless covers)

Love - False Start

The Everlasting First is worthy of Forever Changes, plus it has Jimi Hendrix on guitar. The rest will make you barf.

I love the idea that Napster started b/c people were tired of buying bullshit albums with one good song like Peter Gabriel's So.

Pet Shop Boys - Yes

"The Way It Used To Be"

NADA SURF popular is a great track wit han even better video the rest of the lbum is unlistenable
― anthony, Wednesday, 9 May 2001 00:00 (8 years ago)

You're dumb and you suck at spelling.

A bleedin' obvious answer, but an answer nonetheless - "Sgt. Pepper" - "A Day In The Life." Deserves a Search and Destroy to itself if one hasn't already been done.
― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, May 3, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Haha, what a dick.

More constructively, Ride's Tarantula. 'Black Nite Crash' being an absolutely storming opener, the rest being too dismal to contemplate. Could be a theme worth its own thread: bankrupt bands somehow scoring a bullseye.

Couple albums come to mind...

Icicle Works' clumsily-titled If You Want to Defeat Your Enemy Sing His Song. "Understanding Jane" is such a massive TKO knock-out of a song that there's just no way the rest of the album could keep up with it.

Delays' Faded Seaside Glamour falls into the same category. "Nearer Than Heaven" is such a terrific song that I've completely forgotten about the rest of the album.

White Town Women In Technology
Track 4 - "Your Woman"

The Michael Jackson album with "You Rock My World."

Oasis Be Here Now
Track 1 - "D'Ya Know What I Mean"

http://www.mixmatters.com/hot/images/mobb_deep_blood_money.jpg

The title track of "The Fact of Life" by Black Box Recorder. All the other songs on that album sound like those parody songs from "Not The Nine O'Clock News".

The Walkmen - Bows & Arrows

"The Rat"

Totally agree with this. Also: "Carry the Zero" from Keep it Like a Secret (Built to Spill) and "Grip Like A Vice" from Proof of Youth (The Go! Team)

"Carry the Zero" from Keep it Like a Secret (Built to Spill)

As someone who spent a while putting "Sidewalk" on every mix I made, this makes me sad
(though I haven't listened to "Sidewalk", "Carry the Zero" or anything else off the album since a couple of years after it came out, so maybe you're right)

Nah you are v wrong. It's not quite up there with Perfect but it's still a damn solid album, no reason to pick Carry the Zero over any of the others, good though it is.

I love that whole damn record, but at the very least Temporarily Blind is miles above Carry the Zero.

Sidewalk too.

The Replacements - Don't Tell A Soul, for Achin' To Be. That Marcy Playground record for Sex and Candy. That Fastball record for The Way.

DTAS has "Talent Show" FFS

I'll Be You 4EVA! That is a killer song. The rest, not so good.

The Walkmen - Bows & Arrows

"The Rat"

Totally agree with this.

crazy talk!!

i kept that far corporation album for years just so i could hear stairway to heaven when i felt like it. would have preferred to own the 12 inch of stairway, but i never saw one.

Don't Tell A Soul has a lot of good songs. It's the production that's kind of weak.

My vote goes to Wax's 13 Unlucky Numbers, for "California."

That Fastball record for The Way.

"The Way" may not even be the best song on the album. "Fire Escape" is pretty good, as was the second single, whatever it was called.

I was thinking the Wax album also..

The Marcy Playground album has "St Joe On The Schoolbus" and "Sherry Fraser." I haven't heard the rest, but I liked all 3 singles from that album even though the other 2 hardly got airplay.

Every song on Keep It Like A Secret is good.

"Give My Regards To Broad Street": "No More Lonely Nights"
(Contains several great songs, but they are all pointless covers)

"Not Such A Bad Boy" and "No Values" were previously unheard songs. Both are good, but are not as good as "No More Lonely Nights."

Was going to say Squeeze's 'Domino', but remember it had two: the title track and 'Sleeping With A Friend'. The rest is a mix of mediocrity and utter crap.

1st Junior Senior album - the single
1st CSS album - the single

xpost On the Go! Team Proof Of Youth, "Titanic Vandalism" is a better song than "Grip Like A Vice" so there ya go...

People should be exempt for posting here unless they're actually familiar with the entire album because this is getting annoying.

oops CSS had another single that did well. i meant "Let's Make Love etc."

There are about 9 great songs on that CSS album.

More constructively, Ride's Tarantula. 'Black Nite Crash' being an absolutely storming opener, the rest being too dismal to contemplate. Could be a theme worth its own thread: bankrupt bands somehow scoring a bullseye.

This was my answer.

the bit about how 'consumers are tired of paying for albums full price for just one good song.'

I really hate this argument. A lot of my favourite songs are deep cuts that feel more 'representative', I suppose, of the album than the hit singles. Even if I get an album off rapidshare/whatever, I'll usually listen to it all the way through the first couple of times to get a feel for it. I think a lot of the people who make the 'one good song' argument on the internet are boingboing fans who think Jonathan Coulton is the future of music.

Pulp-It (Blue Girls)
Billy Mackenzie-Outernational (Baby)
New Order-Movement (Dreams Never End)
Belle & Sebastian-Story Telling (Scooby Driver)
Brian Wilson-That Lucky Old Sun (Midnights Another Day)
David Bowie-Black Tie White Noise (Jump They Say)
Rufus Wainwright-Release the Stars (Going to a Town)
Kate Bush-The Red Shoes (Moments In Love)
Blur-Leisure (Sing)
Prefab Sprout-The Gunman & Other Stories (Cornfield Ablaze)

"New Order-Movement (Dreams Never End)"

oh kitchenpaws...

i'm too sleepy to argue though.

Isn't that the Blur album with "She's So High" and "There's No Other Way"? although neither of those are as amazing as "Sing" they're still not bad at all

I strenuously disagree with you that song x is the only good song on album y.

I'm happy we agree to disagree.

And I would not bother arguing if I didn't think they were shit choices for answering the question.

breeders - last splash

iir the 90s c

And with that, I give up. This question sucks anyway.

X Post

Yeah that's the album. I never really need to hear There's No Other Way again, it's not that they're awful I've just been to too many indie clubs in my life. The rest of the album is pretty forgettable. Sing is such an amazing song that seems out of place in the middle of the album. It showed what they were capable of but made the other songs seem even more average at the same time.

graham kills it on 'she's so high'

Kate Bush-The Red Shoes (Moments In Love)

waht

breeders - last splash

INSANITY.

I almost can't think of a song off of Last Splash that is not k-classic.

I strenuously disagree with you that song x is the only good song on album y.

Thought you were talking about Ornette Coleman/Pat Metheny record for a second there.

Oh and the ultimate example is T.S. Monk: House of Music ("Bon Bon Vie")

Ramones - Animal Boy (Bonzo Goes to Bitburg, or whatever it was called that week)
Thin Lizzy - Thunder and Lightning (The Sun Goes Down)

Will revisit the Marcy Playground and Fastway albums in the wake of the defences further up. I couldn't so much as remember another track of the former, which I listened to a fair bit back when; and the only one that stuck in my mind from the latter apart from The Way was Charlie the Methadone Man, whcih was horrible. But I still think DTAS is pretty horrid apart from Achin' To Be.

the Clash - Cut The Crap (This is England)

Can anybody around here back me up about Love - False Start? The Everlasting First is absolute perfection, and then.....

People should be exempt for posting here unless they're actually familiar with the entire album because this is getting annoying.

I'm sorry, we'll all work harder to tailor our tastes to better suit you.

People should be exempt for posting here unless...

Maybe a GOP-style purity test?

breeders - last splash

iir the 90s c

― Big Fate (as Alvin 'Xzibit' Joiner) (history mayne), Monday, April 12, 2010 11:33 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

leave already

Whatever album Bloc Party had "Banquet" on.

Manic Street Preachers - Know Your Enemy (Found That Soul)

(Although this is really in the category of "I don't like them, but this song kills me.")