classic albums

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Can a classic album have a few mediocre tracks on it?

― Melissa W, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'Exile on Main Street' - EVERY track on it is mediocre, yet it's still classic.

― tarden, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Classic to you?

― Melissa W, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, some of the less-mediocre tracks ("Happy", "Just Want to See His Face", "Tumbling Dice") have enough in them that I keep listening to the rest of the album to look for it elsewhere. Hate to use a drug analogy but it's like snorting a garbage sack of icing sugar because there was some very fine stuff in it once. Any album that can actually induce me to listen to it (seemingly on its own volition, like it has a life of its own!) and not just throw it away qualifies as my personal definition of a classic - i.e., something I'll always listen to and actively TRY and find new stuff in.

― tarden, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Why stop at mediocre? Madonna has several albums I find indispensable, and they all have some absolutely bloody terrible tracks on them.

― tarden, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I guess I kind of meant...of your "perfect 10.0" albums, can they have mediocre tracks? Or do you take perfection literally, meaning every song has to be great?
Because I guess my take is, even on albums I basically consider perfect, there's tracks I think are just mediocre.

― Melissa W, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

there are tracks. Erm...grammar all flies out the window at a certain hour.

― Melissa W, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts - Dylan. But I suppose it's a intentionally out-of-sync, a sudden 'fantasy' before he drags us through the last three.

― K-reg, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Some albums in my desert island collection ('Mothership Connection', 'Disco Volante') have bits that aren't as good as other bits, but that just makes the warp and weave of the album more interesting to me. What usually happens with albums like this is that after countless plays I grow to like (or, like to think I understand, although I probably don't) the whole thing. And at the moment where I realize I like the whole thing, I usually don't listen to it any more except rarely. It's done its job. ('For Your Pleasure', 'Led Zeppelin IV').

― tarden, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Also, artists who work diligently to produce albums where every single track is perfect (and by extension every single note on every track, and so on ad infinitum) for some reason tend not to produce albums that bear repeated listening. Otherwise, INXS would be the greatest band in history. Who knows, maybe they were.

― tarden, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I could swear we've done almost this exact topic before, but I can't find it at the moment.

― Josh, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There's got to be a simpler solution to repeat threads than having me go through all the archives reading every ambiguously titled thread. I actually do this. But of course, it's very simple to miss something. And quite daunting to go through all the threads!

― Melissa W, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

yeh, bummed

total favourite. 10.0. the whole deal. i only really reallylike the first 6 tracks and lazyitis

bring a friend is so mediocre. bummed is still my favourite though

― gareth, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

It was an old thread of mine, Josh. It was entitled "One Bad track", I think. I asked whether people had albums which they really liked apart from one truly stinking track.

― Dr. C, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Bad tracks - mediocre tracks - two different things!

― tarden, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sequencing's important too. I mean for whether you even notice (1st few listens) that a couple tracks aren't that hot. (i think there's prob'ly been a separate thread about this too, but whaddaya think i've got time to read everything(again)?) The Dictators' "Go Girl Crazy" - they make the fatal mistake of putting the only 2 less-than-awesome tracks 2nd & 3rd, I'm still gonna call that a classic classic album but I can certainly see why it doesn't make it by lots of people's standards.

― duane zarakov, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sgt. Pepper - "Within and Without You" Synchronicity - "MOther" The White Album - "WHy dOnt we do it in th eroad"

― Mike Hanley, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Then again, on some personal favorites of mine('Reign in Blood', 'Candy-O'), it's just nine or ten versions of the EXACT SAME song. No apex, no nadir. Forget sequencing - put the CD on random play and you'll never notice the difference. To make an album like that that isn't boring, I think that's quite a trick.

― tarden, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Popped in Souled Out": a classic record but every single track is crap. hah!

― Stevie Nixed, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Potentially, _Tigermilk_ by Belle and Sebastian, and conceivably Jay- Z's _Life and Times of Sean Carter_.

― Robin Carmody, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Which song on Tiger milk is the stinker?

― Mike Hanley, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Probably "I Don't Love Anyone". I actually think half the songs on that record are average and yet I still think the album as a whole is very nearly flawless. Funny.

― Robin Carmody, Friday, 25 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

of course it can.

the white album?

which, by the way, is the most comparable to the album that i KNOW you're talking about.

*wink*

if the album you're talking about and the 'other' one were released as a double album as has been mentioned, and as it might've been meant to... the comparison would be even stronger.

a classic album isn't about making the best music it's about going beyond that honest music that comes from a creative place... and changes things.

― harrizonn, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Can a classic song have a few mediocre seconds in it? "Stairway to Heaven" is great until the last sung line ("And she's bu-uy-ing a..."). They should've burped instead. Anyway, (semi) in line with a couple other respondents, I believe that a "classic" album needs a bit of filler. Not dreck, and only mediocre in relation to the great stuff. But the great bits -- which every classic album needs (duh) -- wouldn't be as great if they weren't rubbing up against something (at least slightly) less-great. Perhaps "mediocre" is too severe, but I say in order to be a classic you need a wake-up call (or two) (though not three - then it's just a "good" album) to really drive home how great the great stuff is.

Pet Shop Boys 'very' is the best album of the '90s. There are two songs toward the end (can't even remember what they're called) that I skip over every single time. Maybe I'm missing something. But the point is, they make me WORK a little for "Go West" (last track), and thus (perhaps?) make me appreciate how classic it all is. - Stuart D

― Stuart D, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

How about a mediocre album that is elevated to classic status by a few seconds at the very end of the final track? I'm thinking of Tonio K's 'Life in the Food Chain', obviously.

― tarden, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tarden - is that the part where he's calling Jackson Browne a motherfucker ? That one's a riot !

― Patrick, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Let me just say that it is one of my ongoing shames that I ignored Tonio K for a long time because I thought he was yet another one of Prince's sidemen trying to cash in on the circus. Okay, back to your ongoing classic albums discussion.

― Sean Carruthers, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Stuart - if you skip over them then they don't make you 'work for it' that much, eh? ;)

I'm totally into the idea of great tracks being enhanced by a relatively duff or plodding backing. Often having a middling track 1 explode into a genius track 2 is the making of an album.

― Tom, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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