The Absolute Worst Albums Ever

[murlough23]

I've noticed albums with fairly low grades at the bottom of some people's Music Journals. But think back over the years - is the mediocre stuff you're listening to really as bad as some of the worst stuff ever? What are some of the absolute worst albums that you've ever listened to? (I'm likely to think that an album should only count if you actually made it all the way through the thing and thus can evaluate it based on all of its content - but then again, making something so offensively bad that it's impossible to get all the way through it with your sanity intact is also a notable feat.)

On my list of "Worst Albums I've Ever Listened To" - things that definitely rank in the "F" range in my Music Journals, are the following:

FFH - Voice from Home (worst of 2005)
The ultimate example of embarrassing mediocrity that the CCM industry has to offer. In my review, I compared the sound of Jeromy Diebler's lead vocals to "Ned Flanders with a pencil shoved up his nose." Which might have been a bit generous in retrospect. The intent of this album is actually admirable - an album dedicated towards expressing God's unconditional love for His people in the first person. That makes the results even more devastatingly bad, when the songs are devoted to establishing such superficially obvious cliches as this little gem: "You don't have to wear designer clothes". FFH has had many other terrible albums in the past, and will likely continue to in the future, but I doubt they'll ever top the audacity of this one.

GlassByrd - Open Wide This Window (worst of 2003)
Christine Glass, formerly an artist whose songwriting and chick-rock-lite musical style I found intriguing, has the blandifying process completed here as she phones in the most bland pop-worship record in existence with the "assistance" of her husband, Marc Byrd, a.k.a. the most uninspired producer in all of Nashville. How this guy managed to co-write "God of Wonders" is beyond me. He certainly manages to suck the life out of it in GlassByrd's recorded version, which is still probably the best thing on the album.

Plus One - The Promise (worst of 2000)
Hey look, Christian kiddies! We have boy bands for you to fawn over, too! And who needs to even bother writing songs for them that any respectable adult could possibly take seriously, when their very looks are guaranteed to get their mugs on the covers of every major CCM publication before their album is even released? I started to respect Plus One a bit more when they took more creative control over the songwriting and sound of their albums (which caused them to turn in two average ones before the group fell apart), but that was also at the point where people were starting to bail out on the boy band trend, so clearly they had to do something to stay somewhat viable.

Kutless - Strong Tower (2005)
It takes talent to take a number of worship songs that I have a decent amount of respect for, and turn them into something thoroughly dull and uninteresting, despite the fact that you're supposed to be a rock band. It's a total insult to pretty much everyone who had a hand in writing these songs in the first place. (Including Kutless themselves. The scattered originals do this band no favors.)

Joseph Arthur & The Lonely Astronauts - Let's Just Be (worst of 2007)
There's only so much I can take of Arthur's raspy, slipping-further-into-narcissistic-depression ramblings on his solo albums. 2006's Nuclear Daydream about pushed me to the limit of that. Then, when he decided to form an ad hoc band that he could get drunk and/or stoned with in the studio and record whatever the hell sounded good to their "elevated" collective state of mind in one take, he proved how far he had managed to deteriorate. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to take Arthur seriously again.

Building 429 - The Space in Between Us (worst of 2004)
My Epinions review title says it all. "Q: What occupies The Space in Between Us? A: Lots of filler."

Various Artists - The Passion of the Christ: Songs (2004)
We were absolutely desperate for a musical tie-in to The Passion of the Christ, and for some reason, Wind-Up Records ended up being the go-to label for such a compilation. They managed to eke decent performances out of such diverse acts as MxPx and Kirk Franklin, but most of the rest was wildly unlistenable and just plain trite. It's shocking that this album managed to suck so hard despite the star power present (P.O.D., Lauryn Hill, the much-anticipated Third Day/SCC/MercyMe collaboration, etc.) Having not one, but two song slots occupied by Big Dismal's blandest songs didn't exactly help to promote that band. Really, my only regret here is that we didn't get a brooding, misguided, death-obsessed ballad from Evanescence or something. That would have been the icing on the cake.

Josh Bates - Perfect Day (2005)
Mandolin-playing dude from Appalachia, USA moves to the country-phobic portion of Nashville and finds himself completely blandified by the pop star machine. He tries to make the best of it by sounding like a brainwashed SCC impersonator. It doesn't work in his favor.

Overflow - A Better Place (2004)
What's most hilarious about this one is not that it sounds like a bland, middle-of-the-road CCM band trying to sound "edgy", but the fact that it actually took a group of session players to produce most of the dull music heard here. The credited "band members" barely participated in the making of their own record. An absolutely forgettable excuse for a "band" that, not surprisingly, we never heard from again.

FFH - Still the Cross (2004)
The slightly less shameful predecessor to Voice from Home. These are the kinds of "Me and Jesus" songs that All Star United was making fun of in "La La Land" all those years ago.

Kutless - Kutless (worst of 2002)
Plenty of CCM bands wanted to be Creed. Kutless just happened to ape them in the most hilariously awful way on their debut album. They later turned out to prove capable of sounding like other bland medio-core bands, but this is where their dubious legacy got started.

Scott Stapp - The Great Divide (2005)
I could tolerate him in Creed, but set free from the restraints of his former bandmates, there's only so much of his headache-inducing bellowing that a person can be expected to withstand. I actually did like the title track from this one, so it's a testament to his extreme lack of skill that the rest of the album still provides more than enough of a negative balance to make me give this one a solid F.

12 Stones - Potter's Field (2004)
Again, well-described by my review title. "Q: What's in the Potter's Field? A: Lots of Human Clay."

Building 429 - Iris to Iris (2007)
Did anyone think it was a good idea for this already narrow-minded and personality-challenged band to even further narrow their scope and make a "worship album"? Nope, didn't think so.

Grand Incredible - G. I. Gantic (2003)
Hey, it's Matt and Ethan from the Supertones, with all of the dopiness of the Supertones' dumbest songs, but without the pesky horns! What a brilliant idea!

The Corrs - In Blue (2000)
You've all heard "Breathless". And I'm sure many of you mistook it for a fluffy Shania Twain song. (I'll admit that it was a guilty pleasure at the time.) Trust me, it's 10 times better than the frustratingly non-Irish-sounding and astonishingly superficial (and occasionally more than a bit slutty) pop songs found throughout the rest of this album. You can quit while you're ahead, at the end of track 1.

SonicFlood - Resonate (2002)
OK, so perhaps Jeff Deyo was a little bit overzealous at times, and his solo career (which sounded more like the original SonicFlood than this sorry excuse for a replacement lineup) rapidly began to offer diminishing returns. Everything he touched was still 10 times better than the hostile takeover of a once-decent band that the Michael Jackson mannequin now fronting it (a.k.a. Rick Heil) inevitably found himself in the middle of. That said, I still think the title track from this album is pretty solid. That's about the only good thing I can say.

Train - My Private Nation (2003)
They've always been rather middle-of-the-road, but here they shed any pretense of folk or country underpinnings and try to slick themselves up and be a consummate pop band with occasional misguided R&B leanings. Pat Monahan's voice isn't suited for this kind of thing. It just leads to a barrage of squeaky, annoying melodies and embarassingly stupid metaphors. Thankfully they got themselves back up to average status with For Me It's You, but I don't expect that they'll ever surpass that.

Of course, there's plenty of patently offensive crap out there that sucks far more than anything on this list, but most of that stuff is actually trying to offend. The only such album that I ever even thought it might be a good idea to attempt to listen to would be The Bloodhound Gang's Hooray for Boobies, and I only made it halfway through that one. (Hey, "The Bad Touch" was catchy. Come on, you know you sang along when you thought nobody else could see you.)

[Josh]

Well, I'm not sure if it's the worst album I've heard, but R.E.M.'s "Around the Sun" is easily the most disappointing album I've ever heard. At on point I considered them to be one of my two or three favorite bands in the world, but that album was so wrenchingly bad that it cast their entire body of work in a new light for me for a long time, and I've just recently been able to revisit some of their past glories without the experience being tarnished by bad memories of Around the Sun. But I still can't go back to "Reveal," an album I loved for a long time but somehow seems to have had all its charm and allure stripped away from it by the record that followed it. That's how much Around the Sun devastated me.

[Brenden]

I'd have to go with Joseph Arthur & The Lonely Astronauts.

I have to confess that I've never actually been able to finish the album, somewhere around the title track I turn it off in a fit of despair after having tried to claw my own ears off.

Paris Hilton was awful, but at least I finished her album.

[danny316]

I'm lucky - haven't heard many whole albums that are really bad.

Heck, I even thought that that Plus One album was two-star tolerable. I suppose if I were in the CCM world from 2000-2001, I would have knocked it down a star due to that nauseating marketing approach, but as it stands I missed most of the godawful boyband marketing.

Third Day's Offerings was pretty horrid. Pretty much anything involving Hippocamp is a safe bet for garbage.

[Aaron]

I'm lucky - haven't heard many whole albums that are really bad.

Heck, I even thought that that Plus One album was two-star tolerable. I suppose if I were in the CCM world from 2000-2001, I would have knocked it down a star due to that nauseating marketing approach, but as it stands I missed most of the godawful boyband marketing.

Third Day's Offerings was pretty horrid. Pretty much anything involving Hippocamp is a safe bet for garbage.

Offerings I was tolerable.  Offerings II was horrid.

[murlough23]

Well, I'm not sure if it's the worst album I've heard, but R.E.M.'s "Around the Sun" is easily the most disappointing album I've ever heard. At on point I considered them to be one of my two or three favorite bands in the world, but that album was so wrenchingly bad that it cast their entire body of work in a new light for me for a long time, and I've just recently been able to revisit some of their past glories without the experience being tarnished by bad memories of Around the Sun. But I still can't go back to "Reveal," an album I loved for a long time but somehow seems to have had all its charm and allure stripped away from it by the record that followed it. That's how much Around the Sun devastated me.

I'd put Around the Sun somewhere in D-grade territory. There are scattered lyrics and musical ideas that interest me. Most of the lyrics struck me as R.E.M.'s usual obtusely poetic stuff that we have no hope of getting the first few times around, so all I can really criticize is the music for being slow and dull. And even the band agrees with us there.

I don't think it's entirely fair to punish a previous album retroactively just because of a newer one that sucked. One obviously had no influence on the other. If you liked it before, you should still like it, unless your personal tastes have changed or something.

I still like that first SonicFlood record and early Third Day, after all - perhaps not as enthusiastically as I did back in the day, but it's very rare that I stop enjoying something completely that I used to like a lot.

Heck, I even thought that that Plus One album was two-star tolerable. I suppose if I were in the CCM world from 2000-2001, I would have knocked it down a star due to that nauseating marketing approach, but as it stands I missed most of the godawful boyband marketing.

I suppose you're lucky. I'll agree that the marketing had something to do with my disgust, but I wouldn't have minded it so much if the music had some actual substance to it. Because there's some music I like that is made by pretty boys that young girls fawn over without paying much regard to the actual substance of their music. Doesn't mean said substance isn't there. That reaction just further fuels my hate when I can already see a lack of substance when listening to the music in a vacuum. I always held this idealistic idea in my head that a boy band could potentially make a very good record - even an artistically viable one. I didn't listen to N-Sync's Celebrity all the way through, but there were faint glimmers of that potential in songs like "Gone", and later in some of Justin Timberlake's solo stuff if you ignored the lyrics. Any genre can be artistically viable, but some genres unfortunately lend themselves to becoming commercialized crap more easily than others.

Third Day's Offerings was pretty horrid.

I'm not particularly fond of Offerings, but I'll admit that it might be because Offerings II had a similar effect on me to the effect that Around the Sun had on Josh. I guess it made me realize that the horde of new fans that Offerings won the band weren't really in it for the same reasons I liked the band. This was even evidenced to me at a 3D concert in 2002 when speaking to some ladies seated behind me who gushed about the band's worship songs but gave me blank stares when I mentioned some of my favorite tracks from Conspiracy No. 5, and looked lost when the band busted out with an acoustic version of "Blackbird" that night.

Anyway, I gave Offerings a straight C and that grade still stands. I don't mind the studio recordings. They'd be slightly above average as an EP unto themselves. The live tracks and the cutting back and forth between the two are what drag the presentation of the album down. At the core, it's still a collection of good songs - just not all presented in their best form.

NP: "Braver than the Rest", The Myriad

[bloop]

I finish my awful albums, and Paris Hilton's indeed was.  The Shaggs Philosophy of the World is pretty painful, too. 

Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water by Limp Bizkit is probably the single worst album I've ever subjected myself to - music for Neanderthals.

[murlough23]

Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water by Limp Bizkit is probably the single worst album I've ever subjected myself to - music for Neanderthals.

I only made it through a few scattered tracks of that before I realized that it wasn't even enjoyable for schadenfreude's sake.

I'm surprised Linkin Park didn't get a mention from you... but then I remember you not being able to stomach Minutes to Midnight in its entirety. (Actually, its best song was perhaps its final track.)

[Josh]

Joe Henry's "Murder of Crows" album is far from the worst album I've heard-- I'd put it somewhere in the C- range, maybe-- but it might be the most frustrating, because its suckiness is totally not Joe's fault. He wrote a pretty good batch of songs for the record, but it was just his second album, and first for a major label, and so his label forced him to work with a producer who totally didn't get it, who made Joe go in directions he didn't want to go in, who totally manhandled all the songs with his inelegant, murky production. So the album sounds absolutely awful, but you can just barely tell that, beneath it all, there's a talented songwriter just bursting to get out.

I imagine my feelings toward that album are roughly comparable to murlough's feelings toward Jars of Clay's take on "It is Well with My Soul"-- yeah, it's brutal, but it's the fault of the label more than the band.

[murlough23]

I imagine my feelings toward that album are roughly comparable to murlough's feelings toward Jars of Clay's take on "It is Well with My Soul"-- yeah, it's brutal, but it's the fault of the label more than the band.

Interestingly, I can list far more cases like that where an artist I generally believe in has had their artistic goals corrupted by industry power plays, or where the artists themselves have fallen prey to moments of weakness and done what they gullibly believed would win them a wider audience, resulting in frustratingly below-average output from people who should be capable of better, than I can list cases of albums that are 100% total failures worthy of F-level grades. Anyone can turn in something mediocre if they're not careful, but I think it takes a special type of talent to truly be that bad.

[bloop]

I only made it through a few scattered tracks of that before I realized that it wasn't even enjoyable for schadenfreude's sake.

I'm a glutton for punishment.

I'm surprised Linkin Park didn't get a mention from you... but then I remember you not being able to stomach Minutes to Midnight in its entirety. (Actually, its best song was perhaps its final track.)

I think of their albums as more mediocre than downright awful.  I thought I did listen to Minutes to Midnight in its entirety, but maybe not.  Either way, I haven't felt compelled to listen again.

[murlough23]

I'm a glutton for punishment.

As am I, at times.

I think of their albums as more mediocre than downright awful.  I thought I did listen to Minutes to Midnight in its entirety, but maybe not.  Either way, I haven't felt compelled to listen again.

You're not missing much.

[murlough23]

You know what I just realized? I need to listen to Katy Perry's new album (the artist formerly known as Katy Hudson). With such brilliantly titled songs as "I Kissed a Girl" and "Ur So Gay" on there, it's bound to leave some of the sucky albums on my list in the dust!

I also just remembered that I listened to Lily Allen's Alright, Still once last year, and it was friggin' obnoxious. So sad. "Smile" showed so much potential, at least on a musical level.

NP: "Viva la Vida", Coldplay

[bloop]

You know what I just realized? I need to listen to Katy Perry's new album (the artist formerly known as Katy Hudson). With such brilliantly titled songs as "I Kissed a Girl" and "Ur So Gay" on there, it's bound to leave some of the sucky albums on my list in the dust!

I'm going to be checking that one out.  Hopefully, it's at least funny.

I also just remembered that I listened to Lily Allen's Alright, Still once last year, and it was friggin' obnoxious. So sad. "Smile" showed so much potential, at least on a musical level.

I liked the catty nature of that album - thought it was pretty funny, "Alfie" particularly.

[murlough23]

I'm going to be checking that one out.  Hopefully, it's at least funny.

I kinda liked Katy Hudson's self-titled album back in the day. It was unpredictable and they threw a ton of bells and whistles at it, and really, that was my biggest complaint - just because you have the power doesn't mean you should use it. Which also applies to Katy's voice, since she had a habit of oversinging. But that album had personality, and if you stripped back the songs to a lone instrument (as she did when I saw her do an opening slot for Phil Joel back in '01), a lot of 'em were still good songs at their core.

I'm guessing that the oversinging is probably going to be the only constant between the two. I'm not about to criticize her for going mainstream since I knew she was trying to break into the mainstream for years, but I must say that the apparent lyrical content of the new album shows that she apparently doesn't have much on her mind other than being an obnoxious Britney/Avril hybrid.

[danny316]

I'm guessing that the oversinging is probably going to be the only constant between the two. I'm not about to criticize her for going mainstream since I knew she was trying to break into the mainstream for years, but I must say that the apparent lyrical content of the new album shows that she apparently doesn't have much on her mind other than being an obnoxious Britney/Avril hybrid.

Actually, I don't think Britney or Avril ever did anything so phoned in and gimmicky (I'd say even "Hit Me Baby" wasn't quite as crass). "Ur So Gay" is one of the most poorly written and incoherent lyrics I've ever heard.

...I actually like "I Kissed A Girl", but it's all hook and gimmick. I think I'm done there.

[murlough23]

Actually, I don't think Britney or Avril ever did anything so phoned in and gimmicky (I'd say even "Hit Me Baby" wasn't quite as crass). "Ur So Gay" is one of the most poorly written and incoherent lyrics I've ever heard.

...I actually like "I Kissed A Girl", but it's all hook and gimmick. I think I'm done there.

Looks like this one'll be fun to give a critical mauling. I needed something like that.

NP: "A Thousand Winters Melting", The Myriad

[plvarona]

I kinda liked Katy Hudson's self-titled album back in the day. It was unpredictable and they threw a ton of bells and whistles at it, and really, that was my biggest complaint - just because you have the power doesn't mean you should use it. Which also applies to Katy's voice, since she had a habit of oversinging.

Come to think of it, that was my biggest complaint about Katy Hudson's music in general.  She had potential, but her oversinging really bothered me, and kept me from enjoying her music as much as I could have.

Getting back to the topic at hand, I will say that Stellar Kart's All Gas, No Brake would have topped my list, if I only had the internal fortitude to listen to it all the way (which I haven't yet.)

I will say that out of all the albums I have heard in their entirety, only one has earned the dubious distinction of getting an "F" grade from me.  That album is Live's Secret Samadhi.  Combine ridiculous lyrics that got offensive at times ("Freaks" anyone?) with highly irritating music on just about every song, and you get the idea.  IMO, the only song on that album that had any redeeming value was "Turn My Head", and even then that wasn't nearly enough to make up for the aural carnage everywhere else.  What a mess!

[murlough23]

I will say that out of all the albums I have heard in their entirety, only one has earned the dubious distinction of getting an "F" grade from me.  That album is Live's Secret Samadhi.

Wasn't "Laikini's Juice" on that album? I thought that song was kinda catchy. (Its riff then got ripped off to form the basis of another rare song that actually liked by a band that I generally hate.)

[plvarona]

Wasn't "Laikini's Juice" on that album? I thought that song was kinda catchy. (Its riff then got ripped off to form the basis of another rare song that actually liked by a band that I generally hate.)

Yes, that song was on Secret Samadhi, and I never liked that song.  While I kind-of liked that guitar riff at first, it got old after about 5 seconds, when I realized that was pretty much the whole song!  Yes I do know Kutless ripped it off in "Treason", and I was actually able to pick it out the first time I heard the latter.  Believe it or not, I actually dislike "Treason" less than I dislike "Lakini's Juice."  At least "Treason" doesn't talk about going to the lady's room and taking the water from the toilet.

[valleycat]

I could not get past track 3 in the newsboys - "devotion" album for the longest time after someone gave it to me.  I think I managed to get through it once and then I never listened to it again.  At least "adoration" had "he reigns" and a lazy track order that made it feel like just a one-time only thing.  But a sequel was too much.

[murlough23]

I could not get past track 3 in the newsboys - "devotion" album for the longest time after someone gave it to me.  I think I managed to get through it once and then I never listened to it again.  At least "adoration" had "he reigns" and a lazy track order that made it feel like just a one-time only thing.  But a sequel was too much.

I never even bothered to listen to that album. I wanted to boycott its very existence. I found it funny how Peter Furler insisted that it was more reverent to do worship music than rock music... until the band's worship album sequel didn't sell well. "OK, guys, shut it down! Let's go dig up our guitars and, uh, somebody call Steve Taylor, tell him we were just kidding!"