Disappointing albums

This kind of list is always both a silly and fun exercise, and I enjoyed going through it. The idea though is applicable to a very wide range of things beyond rock music (broadly defined here naturally) albums. Somebody you admire has a streak of brilliance, that’s broken by the kind of creative failure that’s inevitable for any artist who keeps at it long enough (in rock music the outer limits of “long enough” appear to be around 12 years).

I’ll mention what to me is one particularly glaring omission, which is Led Zeppelin’s Presence (1976). After starting their career with as a good a six-album streak as anybody ever, Presence is a massive comedown, despite kicking off with the epic Achilles Last Stand. (I always want to add the possessive apostrophe). The rest of the record is mediocre to flat out terrible, after six albums that barely had a bad song on them, and many many great ones. I’m sure there are similarly stark omissions, given the breath of the subject, especially if one expands it beyond one musical genre, or music in general, which you are hereby authorized to do. (That doesn’t mean you can start posting about the latest presidential poll in the third comment.)

Also there’s a super obvious editing error near the top of the list, as The Secret Life of Plants is from 1979 — I remember it all too well — not 1973. As to the question of whether “they” even have editors any more the answer is pretty much no, which is itself an under-discussed manifestation of enshittification.