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Anything by Frank Zappa. Greatest modern-day composer, my ass.
We're on a roll here, folks. Last week you told us about the worst singles of all time. Now let's up the ante: what about the worst albums?
Actually, last week's poll had me shocked. I happened to really like most of the songs listed ("Seasons in the Sun," "Afternoon Delight," etc.). So I can only feel that most will continue to trash the albums that these songs appear on. Too bad, cuz the songs aren't, in my opinion, bad at all, but are really fun to listen to. However, just about every one that I own
Boots by Nancy Sinatra. As a youngster growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s, we spent summers at the Jersey shore; a rather unique trailer/cabin/day beach south of Point Pleasant called Sea Bay Park. The owner of the place sat in a small ticket booth at the entrance all summer. There he had a Bogen PA amp hooked up to several giant Atlas horn speakers (tubes driving horns, hum?) on the boardwalk and parking lot. This was useful for announcing such things as "Everyone out of the water (sharks)" or "Hector the garbage collector, come to the snack bar," or "Don't park there!" (which prompted my mother, who once lived under Nazi occupation, to refer to the place as "Buchenwald-by-the-Sea"). Anyway, this fellow had a Garrard turntable in the booth, and from 9am to 6pm every day (and I mean EVERY day), all summer long, he played albums. We came to tolerate the endless Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass but Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots are Made for Walking" drove us nuts and made us want to walk out forever. "Ready, boots? Start walkin' . . . Ta, da da dah ta, Ta da dah da ta . . ."
Unfortunately, there are so many choices in this category that it would be virtually impossible to name just one, so, I'll give you a few of the all-time "terrible albums," in my opinion: 1) Bobby Brown's last CD was the absolute pits! I can't even remember the name of it, it's so bad! 2) Anything made by a heavy-metal band! 3) Madonna! Need I say more?! 4) Britney Spare-us! 5) MC Hammer's entire collection! And, last but certainly not least, the all-time worst albums in the history of music were from Vanilla Ice! His stuff was so bad, even Milli Vanilli sounded better! And they were terrible!
Any one of Kiss's solo projects from the late '70s. The Starland Vocal Band. Van Halen III. Anything from Leo Sayer. The William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy albums. The latest Shooting Star release. Anything by Aerosmith after Toys in the Attic. Anything by Britney Spears, Christine Aguilerra, the Backstreet Boys, or any of that crap my daughter listens to. All of the Beastie Boys' stuff. How much space can you devote to this? Anything by U2 after the first album. Lips Inc. Got to go, here comes my boss.
Here are some contenders: Yanni's Live at the Acropolis, all recordings by Madonna, all four Mary J. Blige albums, everything by Cher, all Brian McKnight recordings, all "off-key" Boyz II Men albums, all Puff Daddy and Mase albums (they are probably the same bad albums), all noises recorded by Kenny G. I could go on forever . . .
Jewel's Spirit. This is the ickiest album I've ever heard, with no feeling whatsoever. Monotone all the way through. More stinkers are the Britney Spears albums. All they are are modern-day, toned-down playboys for young boys. No talent!
And the winner is . . . [drumroll, please] Prince's Under the Cherry Moon. The only reason I got this album back in 1986 was that, at the time, they did not make singles in the CD format, and I wanted this one specific cut ("Kiss" . . . remember that one? I think it was first recorded by Tom Jones or someone else back in the 1960s or so, and Prince re-did it in 1986), and the only way I was going to get it was to buy the whole CD, and being that I was/am anal about sound quality and the only way I was going to get it in a single was to buy the prerecorded cassette (and that, of course, was a no-no). So I wasted $15 and bought the whole CD. If you want to know how it was, let me advise all of you, save your money and don't buy it. With the exception of "Kiss," the whole CD sucks. Good thing I am thinking about getting either an MD player or an MP3 recorder/player. If that comes to fruition, then I think I am going to rip the hit song off of the CD and then give the whole CD to my dog so he can play with it (or put it in the trash heap, which is where it belongs anyway). After all, I don't believe in keeping things around that I don't need, can't stand, or don't use. Space around the house is scarce enough as it is. Well, that's my "worst album."
Any album by Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Britny Spears, Mariah Carey, Cristina Ag-you-lare-a, Fiona Apple, Green Day, Matchbox Twenty, Dixie Chicks (pretty much every country album available today), Dr. Dre (also every rap album can burn in the garbage), Puff Daddy . . . Man, I'm going to need a software upgrade to compile all of the commercialized crap that there is out there. You get the idea.