Not an album but an artist. David Bowie.
gasp
I’m really into some artists that cite him as a major inspiration and influence. So it baffles me too.
I find with stuff like this it’s important to understand the context of when it first came out. Had a neighbor say he didn’t get the appeal of the Ramones because a lot of bands sound similar. I told him when the Ramones came out NOBODY sounded like that. Another is David Letterman. By the time he retired he was nothing special but when he first started it was groundbreaking.
Sometimes known as Seinfeld is Unfunny
Yeah - somebody told me Queen were boring and formulaic. I told them to delete their memory of the last 45/50 years’ music and listen to them again. I’m not a massive fan, but props where props are due.
How can you say something so controversial, yet so true?!
Bowie isn’t fantastic. Neither is Bill Murrey or Betty White. They are just people that have been grasped onto by social media and exemplified. It helps if they’ve died and get a “martyr” image too.
I mean some Bowie stuff is good, Life on Mars, Lets dance… But he’s just a British Melloncamp.
Villains by Queens of the Stone Age.
…like clockwork (the previous album) is top 3 for me and may be my all time favorite at any given moment. But the follow-up was just not what I was looking for.
Every other queens of the stone age record is an instant classic. They’re probably my favorite band and I genuinely dislike half their stuff.
Yes!! Exactly this one for me too. I love Clockwork so much, this was weird.
So glad to not be alone on this. It felt unfocused. I think working with Mark Ronson gave Homme a bit too much leeway to make an album that tried to hard to be cool.
It somehow went over the ironic/unironic line that Queens has always danced around.
Like Clockwork has moments that veered towards camp and cheese but never felt insincere or cloying.
I only like the albums they did with dave grohl on drums, the rest just don’t seem to hit for me.
I’m pretty sure that’s only songs for the deaf and a few songs on like clockwork. I can’t get into any of their other stuff.
The latest Tool album.
I can’t even remember the name, but it felt like a lot of noise from an alley full of garbage cans. I don’t know if I finished listening to it.
Not a specific album, but 90% of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s releases. They always sound intriguing at first but end up being mediocre.
Yeah, I really like Polygondwanaland and Flying Microtonal Banana. The rest, save for one other album (don’t recall which one) I just can’t get into. They have cranked out so many albums exploring, but not mastering, so many genres that it’s not surprising to be underwater on the K/D ratio.
Same here. I really enjoy Nonagon Infinity but haven’t been able to get into any other album of theirs.
Pink Floyd - Animals
I like everything else by Pink Floyd quite a bit, just not the album Animals.
I’m the opposite, Animals and Piper at the Gates of Dawn are the only Pink Floyd albums I like.
Piper at the Gates of Dawn?
Hell, I’ve got 12 Pink Floyd albums archived, but I don’t have that one. Honestly I don’t think I’ve even heard of it before.
My favorite Pink Floyd album is The Division Bell. Strangely enough, not long after that became my favorite album, I actually found a pristine copy of it on CD in the ditch on a bicycle ride. No case, just the CD, but very luckily no scratches either.
You better bet your ass I ripped that album that evening, to raw uncompressed WAV audio. And yes, I stuck it somewhere on the Internet Archive…
love piper
Same, Animals is by far my favorite album by them
As far as I’m concerned, there is literally one song in Animals and that one song kicks all other Pink Floyd songs out of the water
The only album I’ve ever owned as a 12” vinyl, cassette tape, 8 track ceramic cartridge and CD. I now have it stored as flac files on a hardrive.
I heard “Through Glass” by Stone Sour, and I liked it so much that I bought the full album. That ended up being the only song of theirs I liked.
Joe’s Garage by Frank Zappa
Ok Computer by Radiohead
I’m still not sure if I liked Tommy by The Who or not.
Joe’s Garage, damn. One of my favorites. What didn’t you like about it? Does any other Zappa resonate with you?
I actually haven’t listened to any other Zappa albums, but probably will at some point.
I love the titular track, so I was excited to listen to the whole thing, but I think I found it 30 years too late. I get he was trying to go Reefer Madness style with his Central Scrutinizer telling a parable of how rock music leads to self-destruction, but the jokes just fell flat for me.
Obviously the nice girl who ended up having to do wet t-shirt contests to get home, the gay prison sex, the robot sex, saying Africans don’t have record players, etc. were all supposed to be absurd, but it’s very 70s humor that nowadays feels more denigrating than biting satire. I also didn’t really get him corpsing in the voiceovers: I’m guessing it was supposed to be a reminder not to take the story seriously, but I personally found it distracting.
I did find it cool that he mixed solos from his live shows into his songs, but it wasn’t enough to save it for me. It’s like when you go back and watch older movies or tv shows, and suddenly something just blatantly racist or sexist just pops up and immediately dates it way more than the technical aspects do.
In short, it feels like Zappa is trying way too hard to be edgy, and it sucked the life out of the album for me. The opening song still slaps, though.
I did find it cool that he mixed solos from his live shows into his songs
IIRC all songs on Joe’s Garage except one have the solos recorded separately (xenochrony). You gotta give Watermelon in Easter Hay a second chance, that’s possibly my favorite Zappa song ever.
Apostrophe is a good one to check out next.
Is that the instrumental? If so, yeah, it was good.
The Mars Volta in general. Tons of friends have recommended them to me after hearing some of what I listen to, and it’s just not my jam. On paper I should, but alas.
Strongly agree.
Individual songs - yes, brilliant. An entire album of this? No thank you
Kate Bush “Ariel”. What a disappointment that was.
Similar answer to a different question.
Something that I liked at first but now dislike.
Decades ago (stone cold sober no less) I really liked Pink Floyd.
Now I just find it difficult to sit through. I want something a bit faster pace.
Oh yeah, I get that.
They’re def a band for a bar with old (souled) people that want time dilation.
But sometimes you want to live 2 seconds for every second. That’s not pink floyd.
that’s 100gecs but it’s more like a year/minute lol
Madeon - Good Faith
I adore Madeon’s first album, Adventure. I knew Good Faith would be different and I was really looking forward to it anyway, and it when it finally came out, it just never clicked with me. It’s an album I come back to probably once per year to try it again, but I just don’t vibe with it. It’s an album I respect a lot, but I just don’t like it.
Justice - Hyperdrama
Still a pretty new release admittedly. That opening track is one of Justice’s best ever songs, but the rest of the album just isn’t grabbing me. I’m hoping it’ll grow on me over time.
To twist your question a bit: The Glitch Mob - Ctrl Alt Reality
Another case of an artist moving in a totally different direction, and when I first listened to it, I didn’t like it. Similar feelings to Good Faith. But then I listened to it again. Then again. Then again. There wasn’t a sudden moment where it clicked, it just got better with every listen. It’s probably my second favorite album of theirs now.
And to twist your question even more. I thought I would dislike: Muse - Will of the People
I’ve been in the camp of “modern Muse isn’t that bad” for a while, but there’s clearly been a downward trend. Even I cannot defend Simulation Theory. I expected WOTP to be more of the same, and somehow I ended up loving it. It is maximum Muse cheesiness, in the best way possible.
I think Hyperdrama is mixed REALLY bad. It has no dynamic, and if you play it in a shuffle with other justice albums, you can instantly tell when a Hyperdrama song is playing by how flat it is.
I think other songs on there are good, but they have no “oomph”.
If you listen to the early remixes coming out by other artists, you can also notice how much bigger they sound by comparison.
The new Billie Eilish album for example. I liked specifically Happier Than Ever and the new one doesn’t catch the same vibe.
Also Rat Wars by Health looked initially exactly like my thing, but fell ultimately flat on the first listen.
My War by Black Flag.
“I must hear this album that singlehandedly inspired entire swathes of the punk and later grunge movements!”
It’s bad. No, not unlikeable, but it’s an album full of songs that you and your friends could probably come up with after a single night of drinking in a shitty basement. There isn’t anything that screams genius or promise or talent.
I’ve listened to it a few times and I just don’t get what our early grunge ancestors were vibing to all those millennia ago.
This is not exactly answering the question asked, but I loved the album What It Is to Burn by Finch. If you could wear out CDs by playing them, I would have worn that one out. I bought their second album as soon as it came out without ever hearing a single song. I assumed I would love every song on the second album the same as the first. They had completely changed their style. It was maybe not awful, but it definitely wasn’t my style. I literally ended up using it under the leg of a wobbly table.
Both Load and Reload by Metallica. I had just discover The Black Album and was hoping for more of the same. I understand that some folks like em, but they just don’t do anything for me.
Rel-Load in particular had a lot of songs that I felt were half baked. Some of those songs should have spent more time in the cutting room floor and didn’t need to be as long as they were. They either needed to make those songs shorter or make them more interesting.
I can’t agree harder. Unforgiven II killed that album for me. Such a letdown. This is Metallica? It’s more like an audio version of Ambien.
