Your Favorite Artists’ Worst Albums

Lana Del Rey: Honeymoon (2015)

I don’t know if it was the lighting in my apartment or the heat broiling the pavement outside, but when I sat down and listened to Honeymoon all the way through for the first time in at least five years, I couldn’t remember why I thought it was flighty and incoherent. I still don’t think it’s anywhere near her best, and I do still think it’s her worst. But it is exactly what she intended: a cinematic, overheated, melancholy reverie with a floaty removal, sweeping arrangements, and Old Hollywood/Southern Gothic sensibilities. Honeymoon makes Chemtrails and Blue Banisters make more sense. She returns to the baroque pop of Born to Die after Ultraviolence’s distortion-drenched haze (though I’m team Ultra ‘til I die). For better or worse, it all fits: the Starline tour bus on the album cover, the inherent “Venice Bitch” -ness of “High By The Beach,” the Wilshire Blvd. name-drop within the album’s first minutes. Moments in “Freak” felt like a slowed, tripped-out version of “Florida Kilos;” “24” feels like it could be on the Godfather soundtrack, and the whole thing feels like it could be played out on a soundstage in front of you. The trip-hop influences come and go, never quite taking hold, and the whole record moves at a glacial pace that can feel more like atmosphere than substance. It’s her third album, and, especially towards the end, it sounds like she’s stalling rather than building. Still, even Lana’s stalling sounds better than most people’s breakthroughs. She also gets points for the Animals cover closer. She got me there! Regardless, after enough listens, Honeymoon started to make me wonder if Lust for Life is Lana’s actual low.

Led Zeppelin: Presence (1976)

Led Zeppelin burned out just as fast as they blew up. By late 1975, not long after their breakout double LP Physical Graffiti, Jimmy Page was strung out on heroin and Robert Plant was recovering from a car accident. Given these circumstances, they cancelled their tour and decided to make Presence instead. So that’s the context the album was born out of: not entirely deliberate, more as a means to kill time. Plant was so deep into his recovery that he was performing his vocals from a wheelchair, and Page took it upon himself to fill Plant’s gaps with even more guitar, overwhelming the mix and nearly taking complete creative control of the record. It’s the first Zeppelin record without keyboard (with John Paul Jones kept solely to his bass parts), and John Bonham could arguably be seen as a saving grace, his explosive drumming upping the energy and closing the gaps in some of the weakest songs. Songs like “Candy Store Rock” or “Hots for Nowhere” crumble next to the more experimental “Achilles Last Stand” and “Nobody’s Fault but Mine,” which remain some of their most innovative and expansive songs.

Neil Young (& the Shocking Pinks): Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983)

Every time I think I have it rough, I remember I’m not a classic rock figurehead trying to stay relevant in the depths of the 1980s. Neil Young’s Everybody’s Rockin’ was his attempt to make a statement that just royally flops. He tries to go for a “This is the root of all music since!” message that 1983 listeners (for whom The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” had been their Song of the Summer) weren’t interested in even entertaining. There are covers (grating opener “Betty Lou’s Got A New Pair of Shoes”) and originals (the unfortunate “Payola Blues”), all equally rockabilly and shallow. Young’s voice, never his strong suit, sounds even more beat up than usual: strained, angry, frustrated. He could’ve thought the whole thing through better. He could’ve done a “reimagining” instead of a downright replica. I take solace in knowing that, regardless, Young had zero regard for what the ‘80s general population thought, and it was more for him than anything else.

Oasis: Heathen Chemistry (2002)

Some said Heathen Chemistry was Oasis finally returning to form. While that’s true, it’s hard not to view it as an “Oasis doing Oasis” album, a step back to old sounds just to give the people what they want. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that “The Hindu Times,” though front-loaded bait, is an absolute ripping intro that I think I’d cry to if I saw them play live. Liam Gallagher’s vocals are particularly whiny if I have to say it; Noel credits the album’s delay with Liam being too drunk to put down his parts, which feels emblematic of the phoned-in quality the record can hold. “Little by Little” gives full adult contemporary—Daughtry, Nickelback, pick your poison—and yes, it’s because of Noel’s vocals. There are batches of corny lyrics, “We the people fight for our existence” is particularly crazy, like teens trying to protest without knowing what they’re protesting. Johnny Marr even graces the band with his presence, saving B-sides “(Probably) All in My Mind” and “Born on a Different Cloud” from total irrelevance.

Paramore: After Laughter (2017)

After Laughter feels like the point where Paramore lost some of the edge that originally drew me in; the shift towards pop rock, and away from their grungier, harder roots, marks a stylistic turn I never fully bought into. I know it’s a divisive record in the fandom too, arriving at a time of major personnel changes and signaling the band’s evolution toward the This Is Why era. I connect more with early Paramore, partly for nostalgia, but mostly because the raw, emo-rock energy just hit harder in my prepubescent ears. I like and relate to a lot of the themes Williams explores on After Laughter, (songs like “Idle Worship” capture a deep unease with aging and identity: “I can’t think about getting old / It only makes me want to die / And I can’t think of who I was / Cause it just makes me want to cry cry cry”), but musically, they’d lose me by the chorus, shifting mid-song and at-times abandoning any remnants of gritty bite in the verses. The record bounces around a lot, veering between psych, ska-adjacent rhythms, post-punk, and piano balladry, but it never fully coheres. “No Friend” is a standout, and I appreciate what they were going for with “Tell Me How” as a closer, but the late-arriving beat and low energy make it feel more like a fizzle than a firework.

Pavement: Terror Twilight (1999)

Terror Twilight is in the “least good” territory of this list. For me, it just doesn’t land the way earlier Pavement albums do. I like the folky moments, but it feels scattered, and runs out of steam quicker than some of their longer albums. Even Wowee Zowee, which often competes with it for Least Favorite, keeps it interesting until the final minutes. It might just be too hi-fi for what I’m used to from them. They’d spent years resisting conformity, only to throw in a last-ditch effort at the buzzer, all while more detached from each other than ever. They even brought in Nigel Godrich, of OK Computer fame, to whip them into shape, which meant less experimenting, more sticking to structure, not giving them enough time to chase down the detours. Songs like “Folk Jam” stand out, if only because they feel the most jammed out and expansive, even if the tracks rarely go longer than four minutes.

Pink Floyd: Ummagumma (1969)

I want to like this album so badly, if only because the cover—the Droiste pattern creating an endless tunnel of repeated images. It gives the impression that the record will transport you into the depths of the Pink Floyd universe at a time when the group was in major flux. It was their second full-length venture without Syd Barrett (founding member and original creative force), and a step back from the cohesion of More. Ummagumma is a snapshot of four musicians trying to figure out what their band’s next sound is gonna be, but not talking to each other about it. Richard Wright, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Nick Mason each worked independently, owning their own “sides” of the LP. Wright’s “Sysyphus” is a four-part orchestral tragedy, the third part of which is almost unlistenable for its clanks and clamors. Waters’ “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” is a cacophony of animal noises, while “Grantchester Meadows” possesses shimmers of what would come on The Wall. Gilmour later admitted to “bullshitting” his section, “The Narrow Way Pts 1-3.” The most impressive thing about this album is the fact that they released Meddle only two years later.

Talking Heads: True Stories (1986)

True Stories wasn’t even meant to be a Talking Heads album. David Byrne wrote it to go with a movie by the same name, rather than with the band specifically in mind. The movie followed a cowboy (Byrne) visiting a town in Texas and interacting with its citizens. They’re still fun tracks, if only because of the people recording them, but it teeters into parody, especially without the film as context. They’re almost so inconsequential that I forget them as soon as they’re over. Most importantly, though, we wouldn’t have Radiohead as we know them without True Stories; B-side “Radio Head” was direct inspiration for the band name. And for some reason, the cover ended up being the de facto Talking Heads logo? What the hell, sure.

Taylor Swift: Lover (2019)

I’m by no means a Swiftie. If anything, I lean closer to the skeptic side of the spectrum—if not because of her music, then because of the overwhelming scale of her fame and wealth and the tightly managed brand that is her public-facing persona. Still, I like to think I can set aside my personal hangups and find a song or two on each album that clicks. But I can’t say that for Lover. Her 2019 LP is like the foil to her darker, Reputation-era persona: a full-on pop sugar rush after dabbling in EDM. It’s a complete 180 that reads as someone trying too hard to project lightness. The opener “I Forgot That You Existed” doesn’t even sound like her. It’s uncanny, like a bot imitation, or what you’d get if you asked a very early version of ChatGPT to record her vocals. Dropping the line “In my feelings more than Drake” within the first 30 seconds is also one of the more bewildering choices on the album. She experiments with trap-lite production on “The Man,” which comes off like Charli XCX cosplay filtered via Selena Gomez’s Disney era, complete with an overly literal take on gender standards. I can’t talk about Lover and not mention “ME!,” the Brendon Urie-featuring single injected into the populace’s veins against our will. “Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince” is an odd return to high school imagery, one that’s hard to connect to from someone in their 30s. And then there’s “Paper Rings,” which pivots to full Lumineers hey-ho energy. Taken together, the album feels like a search for direction more than a clear statement.

The 1975: Notes On A Conditional Form (2020)

The fourth album from The 1975 was a dropping-off point for a lot of original fans, myself included. It ended up being a COVID album, partially due to the group changing plans for their third and fourth releases at the last minute (what was originally meant to be Music for Cars was split into A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships and Notes On A Conditional Form). This was apparently done because Matty Healy found double albums “self-serving.” But I’d argue a 22-song LP recorded over 19 months in 15 studios across four countries is just as highfalutin. The record came at a really annoying time for Healy in a personal sense, a time when he was viewing himself as a holier-than-thou political trailblazer of sorts (hence the Greta Thunberg narration on the opener). There are seemingly endless genre variants throughout the tracklist, with punk explosions (“People,” which features the indisputably iconic line “Well, my generation wanna fuck Barack Obama / Living in a sauna with legal marijuana”), honky tonk on “Roadkill,” Americana on the Phoebe Bridgers-featuring “Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America” that I can’t listen to too many times in a row due to the amount of existential dread it gives me. There are sweeping orchestrals, industrial electronic textures, and free-wheeling sonic experiments. Not all bad, but overstuffed nonetheless.

The Beatles: Beatles for Sale (1964)

I’ll go to my grave with the belief that we would lose nothing as a culture if Beatles for Sale never existed. Yeah, that’s right, I wouldn’t even miss “Eight Days A Week.” It was recorded during peak-Beatlemania, peak Beatles-as-cash-cows (it was their fourth album in 21 months, their second of that year), shoved right between A Hard Day’s Night and Help! to create a nice little slump in the Fab Four’s discography. They went back to half covers, half originals for this one, simply because Lennon and McCartney didn’t have enough time to come up with another full album’s worth of material. What they did write, though, is some of the most deceptively depressing in their discography. The opening three-track run of “No Reply,” “I’m A Loser,” and “Baby’s In Black” is just a bummer! Our boys were tired and weary! They just wanted to rest their little bones. Their voices don’t even sound that good, because they literally recorded it while they were touring. They also left the two best songs of those sessions (“I Feel Fine” and “She’s A Woman”) off the album, releasing them as A/B singles instead of replacing a cover or two with them.

The Rolling Stones: Dirty Work (1983)

1983 was a rough year for the rock and rollers. Before even listening to Dirty Work, you could tell the Stones were mid-identity crisis just by looking at the cover: the neon, the hair, the geometry of the whole thing. The album was recorded in peak Mick/Keith beef, so much so that the instrumentals were recorded fully without Jagger (it’s the first record with no Jagger guitar since Let It Bleed). There are only three Jagger/Richards songs on the project (the lowest since 1965), and “Harlem Shuffle,” the lead single, was the first non-original single since their earliest releases. Charlie Watts was in and out of sessions because of his heroin habit, and Jagger sounds particularly squawky, quacking his way through the songs with a persistent tone of anger that permeates the tracklist. They go from sounding like they’re cosplaying the ‘80s (“Back to Zero”), into a random bout of ska (“Too Rude”), back to Exile-era, harmonica-laced country rock (“Had It With You”). This was a cry for help.

The Smiths: The Queen Is Dead (1986)

I’m already preparing to be doxxed for this, but I have to stand by my convictions. It was difficult to make my selection for The Smiths, as much of their best work is featured on compilations only, each taking a different form for UK and US releases. There was just no way around it: The Queen Is Dead is my least favorite Smiths record. It’s Morrissey at his most insufferable. “Sweetness, I was only joking when I said / I’d like to smash every tooth in your head” makes me want to smash every tooth in my head, and then shove the crumbs down my ear canals. They were too confident! No one can ever take “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” from them, but I’ll sure as hell try to go for the rest of it. Justice for Strangeways!

The Strokes: First Impressions Of Earth (2006)

I don’t foresee there ever being a time when First Impressions Of Earth isn’t my least favorite Strokes album. I’m a true Is This It believer, and I don’t think I like how crisp the band sounds on this. I can appreciate the pivot toward more thrashing guitar themes, but it feels like they saw that people liked “Reptilia” and they said, “Well, here’s all the different ways we can do that same thing, but not as well.” Songs like “You Only Live Once” and “Heart in a Cage” are higher points, but they hide the best song (“Red Light”) at the end of the album. Julian Casablancas is at his whiniest, as if that was even possible. “On the Other Side” and “Fear of Sleep” are just him moaning into a mic on an endless loop. “Ask Me Anything,” one of my least favorite songs of all time, puts it right in front of our faces: Casablancas “had nothing to say.” If that was the case, why not opt for discernment?

Tyler, The Creator: Goblin (2011)

Goblin is one of those albums that, despite its cult status and musical impact, just hasn’t aged well. Slurs are dropped in the first 30 seconds. The verses are riddled with violence, specifically against women, flaunting it like an accomplishment (just listen to “Tron Cat”). And yes, that is its innate concept—Tyler returns to the Dr. TC therapist theme used in Bastard, setting the record up as a space to let all of that chaos and violent energy loose without shame or remorse—but in the wrong ears (specifically, white suburban tween boys), the impact is dangerously literal. It’s also just Tyler at his most scattered and meandering, his least focused. It’s even a step down from Bastard, which had a more complete narrative and cohesive style. There are plenty of tracks that don’t need to go on for the six or seven minutes they do, and there is probably some truncated version of the tracklist that would make for a much more compelling record. But especially looking at the places his artistry has gone since (the narrative introspection of Flower Boy, the synth-pop jazz on Call Me If You Get Lost), Goblin feels like a necessary evil in retrospect. Tyler even told GQ himself that he thinks Goblin is “horrible,” so I’m honoring the Creator with this one as well.

Willie Nelson: Countryman (2005)

Countryman is probably Willie Nelson’s worst album, if only because it feels the most like he was trying to inhabit a character. It’s his reggae record—a decade in the making—and while the concept had the potential to work, the execution makes it cartoonish rather than grounded. Originally intended for Bob Marley’s Island Records before that label got folded into Universal, Countryman features reggae renditions of old Nelson tracks and a few covers, including Johnny Cash and Jimmy Cliff (“The Harder They Come,” which ends up being one of the better moments because it leans more acoustic and stripped-down). The biggest issue is the dissonance between the vocals and the production. Willie’s voice is Auto-Tuned beyond recognition in certain spots, clashing with the beats underneath instead of flowing with them. The production feels muddy and overstuffed—sometimes it’s slide guitar and a steel drum tossed in for the island effect, other times it’s buried in a mix of auxiliary percussion that doesn’t seem to serve the song at all. At its best, it’s passable background music; if you forget it’s Willie, you might not even mind it. But ultimately, it just sounds like a regular Willie Nelson album with a bunch of mismatched rhythms and textures slapped on top, and that disconnect is hard to ignore.