One Hit Wasn't Enough for These Wonders

Scott Hardie | June 13, 2007
Assignment: List ten songs that you liked enough to buy the album for, and later regretted because all of the other songs turned out to be terrible.

This may be an inappropriate question in the age of the mp3, but I do mean any albums from your music-collecting history as well. And ten is variable if you can't think of enough or think of more.

Scott Hardie | June 13, 2007
Smash Mouth, "Walking on the Sun" – Victims of Sugar Ray's similar genre-swapping bait-and-switch, I feel your pain.

Propellerheads, "Spybreak" – This song from the lobby battle in The Matrix may be the only thing on Earth that turns lousy after you remove Keanu Reeves.

Class A Felony, "Time to Make the Doughnuts" – Like all kitsch, big laughs for giddy college kids, but depressing after the novelty wears off.

Sublime, "Santeria" – Even talentless, heroin-addled thugs can come up with a single catchy tune sometimes.

Natalie Imbruglia, "Torn" – "Roses are red, violets are blue" holds a deep ocean of meaning compared to this woman's sub-moronic lyrics.

Forest for the Trees, "Dream" – The alarm clock everyone hates at the song's coda signals the end of any fun on this album.

Geinoh Yamashirogumi, "Kaneda" – The whole Akira soundtrack is weird, but this song was the only weird-in-a-good-way track.

The Cranberries, "Zombie" – Wal*Mart wouldn't let me return the CD; true story. They didn't want it back.

The Eurythmics, "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" – Beautiful song, comatose album.

The Mavericks, "I Should Have Been True" - I heard the jazz band The Mavericks. They ruled. The CD that I bought was by the country band The Mavericks. They did not.

Kris Weberg | June 13, 2007
M.C. Hammer, "Addams Groove" -- I was 11 and dug the Addams family's movie. As a side note, the lingering, toxic memory of Too Legit to Quit later prevented me from discovering hip-hop with the rest of my generation.

Bush, "Greedy Fly" -- It had a cool video.

Barenaked Ladies, "One Week" -- Wow, did that get old fast. And a novelty act is generally not going to produce a good album unless both "Weird" and "Al" are in the name somewhere.

Veruca Salt, "Venus Man Trap" -- A rare case of a shitty album by a shitty band having a mildly catchy pop song as a deep cut.

Jethro Tull, "Warchild" -- The title track of this album was pretentious but still fun. The rest of it was the first big step in a once-enjoyoable group's speedy journey up its own sphincter.

Electronic, "Getting Away with It" -- A single, this wouldn't count, except...how could a collaboration between Joy Division/New Order alumnus Bernard Sumner and legendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr be this horrifyingly awful? (At least Marr is redeeming years of mediocrity and occasional pure suck with his brilliant work on the new Modest Mouse album.)

Alanis Morrisette, "You Oughtta Know" -- Genre bait-and-switch, pure and simple. Who knew that the righteous indignation of this introductory single was simply the cover for yet another ballad-loving, nasally-sung pop-grunge album?

The Eels, "Novocaine" -- Wait, so the piano on this track wasn't just a bit of orchestral brilliance? You're actually a piano band that used some guitar on the hit single?

Stone Temple Pilots, "Big Bang Baby" -- Wedding Spector's "wall of sound" to grunge sensibilites worked for this single. Unfortunately, Scott Weiland et al. lacked both the talent and commitment to build an album around this perhaps thin stroke of inspiration.

Orgy, "Blue Monday" -- If you cover a brilliantly written song with a modicum of competence, you can pass as as moderately competent band even when you suck. (Luckily, tAtU failed to cover "How Soon Is Now?" with even that modicum of competence.)

Erik Bates | June 13, 2007
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Jackie Mason | June 14, 2007
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Amy Austin | June 14, 2007
It's okay, Jackie (& Erik, except for that I'm not a huge fan of STP ;-D) -- you're not alone... and I had the same feelings about The Cranberries, BNL, & Alanis Morrisette, too.

Denise Sawicki | June 14, 2007
I actually like that Barenaked Ladies album fairly well... I don't listen to it much because I pretend to be too cool, but I like wimpy pop so the album is fine by me. I try not to buy albums unless I know I'm going to like a lot of the songs. OK... the one exception I can really think of where I wound up with an album where I didn't like many songs would be that White Town album, and I know Scott disagrees with me on that. I did go through a phase of not being hyper-careful about money but now I basically buy myself nothing, so there's no risk of buying anything I don't like :P

Jackie Mason | June 14, 2007
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Kris Weberg | June 14, 2007
I thought the Breeders album was pretty strong, myself, though "Cannonball" is certainly the best track on it. The other songs suffer mainly by comparison, but they're still above average grunge.

Tony Peters | June 14, 2007
a quick review of my Itunes library shows me

Audio Slave for for sure I like both Chris Cornell and Rage but other than Cochise that album blew

Creed....I'm embarrassed that I purchased Human Clay

Dishwalla, nice guys they spent a week with us on the Kitty Hawk playing acoustic sets but their album was a disapointment

Fuel....I can't remember much about the album (that's bad for me)

Gorillaz....2 albums 1 song each album

Black Eyed Peas same as above

I'm with Amy, Cranberries rock, BNL was catchy at the time but these days I could take it or leave it

Jackie Mason | June 15, 2007
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Aaron Shurtleff | June 15, 2007
I think Tragic Kingdom is the No Doubt album, and I feel the pain.

Scott, thanks for reminding me of the joys of Sugar Ray singing about their mean machine, which was long and slick and olive green, if memory serves! ;D

As ashamed as I am to admit it, the resy of Mr. Big's album was nothing like "To Be With You", although I, personally, was not affected by this...but I know people who were... :)

Scott Hardie | June 15, 2007
"To each his own" is indeed the theme of the discussion. I liked the aforementioned Audioslave and No Doubt albums, though I agree the latter was corny. I'm surprised no one spoke up to defend the Eurythmics. :-\

As for ska, most of it was so lousy that a novelty act like Mephiskapheles, the would-be Satanic ska band known for the "Bumble Bee Tuna" cover, turned out to be pretty good. Well, I liked them, anyway. Just out of curiosity, I went looking online for their songs or videos just now, and found one of the cheapest-looking music videos I think I've ever seen: (link) Did they spend the whole $20 bill on that video or did they have some left over for beer?

Tony Peters | June 16, 2007
I have no respect for any Ska band that has the world ska in their name, there are plenty of good ska bands who don't have the hook in their name and for that I am thankful....I Ithink it's time to listen to some Pressure Boys

Jackie Mason | June 16, 2007
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Scott Hardie | June 16, 2007
Not exactly. I had terrible taste in music years ago. :-)  Years from now, I'm probably going to look back on the music I buy today and wonder what was wrong with me. If we eliminate the years-long gap from the question, half of my music originated with liking one song and buying more and more by the artist and still following them today.

Scott Hardie | June 16, 2007
Another album for my original list (sorry Erik): "Talk Show," the self-titled album by a new band formed when the members of STP got fed up with Scott Weiland's drug problems and found a different singer. Great opening track, an instant radio hit with an innovative video, but the rest was a soupy mishmash of overproduced alt-rock. The band had no hooks. Their debut album wound up being their only album.

Erik Bates | June 17, 2007
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Kris Weberg | June 17, 2007
I have no respect for any Ska band that has the world ska in their name

Surely there's an exception to that rule for the Skatalites.

And "How Bizarre" was by OMC, about whom I know nothing but their initials and their hit track's title.

And album rediscovery? Actually, that's my story with the Breeders and "Cannonball." For years I'd never listened much to the rest of it. Then one day a friend was playing it on his stereo, I asked who the killer band were, and he told me. "I have that album!", I shouted. Digging it out and replaying it, I got to love "Invisible Man," "Divine Hammer," and pretty much every other track on Last Splash.

Jackie Mason | June 17, 2007
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Amy Austin | June 19, 2007
"To each his own" is indeed the theme of the discussion. I liked the aforementioned Audioslave and No Doubt albums, though I agree the latter was corny. I'm surprised no one spoke up to defend the Eurythmics. :-\

Yep. Ditto on Tragic Kingdom -- corny, but I like... can't understand how anyone liking, saaaayyy, Mr. Big's "To Be With You" (ahem) wouldn't feel the same way... ;-D And I do actually like a ton of Eurythmics, but since they are a bit hit-or-miss for me and I don't always know which tracks came from which albums, I refrained from comment on that one -- I feel the same way about Annie Lennox's solo work, too. The others mentioned were all albums that I know from one track to the next, end-to-end, from multiple plays, and that's where the lack of favoritism smarts... ;-P

Steve Dunn | June 19, 2007
Wow.

I disagree pretty strongly with the call on Smashmouth (maybe I was pleasantly surprised because I got the record for one dollar), but the inclusion of Sublime on that list borders on a crime against humanity.

For me, the most recent version of this phenomenon is Arcade Fire. I heard them play on SNL and really enjoyed the one song I heard. So I bought the new album, and that song is the ONLY one I can tolerate.

When I worked at a record store in high school, we got a lot of returns of the Extreme record with "More Than Words" on it. Turns out the rest of the album was heavy metal.

Denise Sawicki | June 19, 2007
I can also chime in to say I like more than one song from "Tragic Kingdom".. I don't have the album but I've heard it and recall finding it decent. Anyway where I lived at the time (Rochester, NY) there were at least 3 songs from the album getting heavy airplay so I'm surprised they'd be called a 1-hit wonder :)

Scott Hardie | June 20, 2007
I think I just expected more from Sublime because I knew they had a number of hits off of that record, and it was such a landmark record of the nineties, and the good songs seemed to evince that the band had talent. When I finally bought the album many years too late and listened to it all, I was surprised how poorly the b-sides held up to the hits, and how many of the lyrics were about crime and street life. Granted, I would have liked it more if I'd discovered it at its cultural flashpoint like everyone else, but I can't have been the only person who bought that album expecting more songs like "What I Got" and being surprised. Anyway, my comment above acted like there was only one good song and there are several, so that wasn't fair.

I also got that Smash Mouth album for a dollar, and I wanted my money back. I didn't really mind that it was a different musical genre than the hit single, or that it was so angry and vulgar and dumb; I just minded that it was so bad.

Scott Hardie | June 20, 2007
Time to make more enemies: The most recent album purchase that I regret is "Fallen" by Evanescence. I picked it up based on the recommendations of several friends, and I've failed to make it all the way through after several attempts. I could call it overproduced and tacky and uninspired and dull-minded, but the real problem is just that it's so aesthetically displeasing to my ears, and that's a subjective call. I would understand if the friends who liked it were 15, but they were all 35 and up.

Another recent mistake: "Karaoke Superstars" by Superchic[k]. Maybe the Donnas set the bar too high for teenaged rock bands, but that album is as dumb as a bric[k]. I wish I had a niece or nephew in middle school to take it off my hands.