The 411 Music Top 5 08.26.08 Most Disappointing Albums

Posted by Blake Lauderback on 08.26.2008

This week our panel of (self-proclaimed) experts is taking on the most disappointing albums we have ever encountered. From Guns and Roses and Iron Maiden to Pink Floyd and Dave Matthews Band, no artist is safe. Please join us as we work through our depression.


Welcome back to the Music Zone Top 5! I cannot apologize enough for my absence last week, though I will take full responsibility for you all having to endure a week without our little roundtable of list making. I will spare you the boring details, but sometimes life just gets a bit too crazy.

Before I share last time's winning list with you all, I would like to remind you that the list is supposed to represent the reader's response to the topic from last time… not this time. Poor Steveo was unnecessarily abused by a lot of you that thought that his list of the Top 5 Grunge Bands was supposed to represent the most underrated bands of all time. Try to keep that in mind, okay? Good. Moving on…

Our weekly winner is…

The man they call Truffles. Here is his list of the Top 5 Underrated Bands

5. The Band - I just recently watched "The Last Waltz" so this might be a little biased. The fervor and respect that the people in the music industry have for these guys is almost awe-inspiring. There were big names coming out just to perform with these one last time and for what? A band that has now almost been lost in time. I am a classic rock fan (as you can see by this rather tilted list) and I was unaware of the awesomeness that is The Band. Very underrated, and more people should look into them.

4. Dire Straits -Ok, multi platinum, check, "Sultans of Swing" check, "Money for Nothing" check. Underrated, you bet your sweet ass. These guys defined the beginnings of MTV for me with the "Money for Nothing" video, and all we here about is that gosh darned "Video Killed the Radio Star" song. The ultimate in chill out music that is not as appreciated as it should be.

3. Alice in Chains - These guys are a little too dark for me, but I have to give respect were credit is due. When the big names of the grunge era are bantered about you hear your Nirvana and Pearl Jam, for good reason, but these guys were performing at a level that was just as high if not higher than those two, and are not (in this humble author's opinion) held in the same regard as they should be.

2. Bad Company -I absolutely adore Bad Company, and you get an occasional song from them on the radio like umm yeah "Bad Company" but they are still way underrated. I picked up a greatest hits album from them and they just churned out hit after hit. It was unbelievable to hear the volume of good solid classic rock that I now know I can attribute to them.

1. The Velvet Underground -This was an easy one because very few people (that I know) ever refer to this band. When I first heard about the band someone (I believe Rolling Stone magazine) said that they were making very good music that rivaled the Stones at their peak and no one knows about them. Well, then I said to myself "self lets prove these pompous know it all music critics wrong" and then picked up some of their stuff. I said goddamned, the pompous music critic was right and it is a shame no one is listening to them because some of their music is among the best of their time.

Thank you Truffles, excellent job. Now, to the rest of you, don't you want to be heard? Then send in your own Top 5 for today's topic!

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Before we dive into this week's edition, I have to recognize last week's winning author. This gentleman made a cameo appearance here against a panel filled with Top 5 regulars and kicked the crap out of us, all because he mentioned that Sevendust is underrated. No other act received half of the love that Sevendust did. That means that the master of "All That You Can't Live Without," Mr. Ben Czajkowski, is our weekly winner. Congrats Ben, you are welcome back any time. (But next time, we will be ready for you)

Now, this week we are taking a look at some tragic moments in our musical lives. That's right… we are dissecting the albums that left us with that sickening feeling in the pit of our collective stomachs. Here we go…

The Top 5 Most Disappointing Albums

Dan Halen
[Rants & Raves, reviewer]

HONORABLE MENTION: Metallica - St. Anger (I figure someone else will tear this one apart so I'll leave it be), Blackfoot - Siogo (WTF? After a trilogy of albums that basically put them at the top of the Southern rock dynasty, they cover a Peter Cetera song - badly I might add - and polish their sound up for radio? Fail!), Lynyrd Skynyrd – pretty much everything after the plane crash (I'm a fan, being from the South and all, but really, it's just not the same attitude, and the writing has gotten really generic on the last few albums – retire already, you're destroying the legacy), Peter Frampton - I'm In You (really, Pete? This is how you follow up one of the biggest albums of all time?), Chicago – pretty much anything after IX on (they don't even sound like the same ground-breaking band they were in the 70s – they just became another faceless corporate hit machine rather then the experimental pioneers of style that they started out as). There's plenty more and I could do this all night, but I must pick a Bottom 5.

5. Yes - Drama - This isn't horrible, but after the failure of their last album to really do anything, Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson departed (this would be the first and only time that a Yes album did NOT contain Jon Anderson's vocals and his departure would make Chris Squire the only founding member to never leave Yes at any time during their career). Their replacements? The Buggles (no Blake, not The Beatles). Who you say? The creators of "Video Killed The Radio Star". Trevor Horn (vocals) and Geoff Downes (keyboards) were a two-man geek band, responsible for that song and the first video ever played on MTV. Now while Downes was a competent keyboard player (he went on to form Asia with Steve Howe from Yes and Carl Palmer from Emerson, Lake & Palmer), Horn was at best a poor sub for Anderson. He had that same airy voice, but not the range. Lengthy epics such as "Machine Messiah", something Trevor and Geoff were not accustomed to, weighed down the album. Their music was simpler and more pop/electronic as opposed to improvised and extended passages. While I like a couple of the songs, it just sounded and "felt" wrong. The upside? This was the final Yes album for several years and when they did regroup, it was with Trevor Horn producing (something he was much better at) and Anderson was back on board. The result: the Yes comeback with 90125, which breathed new life into the band and sustained their career for another few years before they revamped the lineup and took another direction.

4. Neil Young - Trans - I debated on this one because I actually kind of like SOME of the stuff on it, but then reality set in and I realized this threw most everyone for a loop. This and the following two or three albums actually got Neil sued by his then-new label, Geffen Records, for "not sounding like Neil Young". LMFAO! I'm sorry, but with that voice (and I love him) how can he NOT sound like Neil Young??? Well, I get what they're saying though – he'd been alternating between nice acoustic material and the rampaging sound of Crazy Horse and this…this was almost completely synthesized. Drum machines. Vocoders. Keyboards and synth bass. The guitar was there, but polished as opposed to raging. It didn't help that he remade the Buffalo Springfield classic, "Mr. Soul", into a dance song.

3. Van Halen - III - Where to begin here? VH had already pulled off the rare trick of replacing their front man successfully - and becoming even bigger than they were originally (debatable, but still…it didn't hurt them). Third time's the charm NOT. Gary Cherone, one sad panda after the dissolution of his funk metal band Extreme, was invited aboard as Sammy Hagar's replacement (and let's face it people – Extreme got big off of two songs that were nowhere near representative of what they actually sounded like – it was like if Motley Crue got big off of "Home Sweet Home" and the rest of their material was ignored). Gary is a good singer and a good front man. Problem is that Diamond Dave's Vegas shtick fit in perfectly with the band, as did Hagar's everyman-just-having-fun image. Cherone was a Freddie Mercury fan and his poise and mannerisms just didn't cut it. I actually saw the band live and Gary tore up some old classic Van Halen – heck, they even allowed him to pick some old stuff they hadn't done since the Roth era such as "Romeo Delight" and "Unchained". Problem was, he dressed and acted as if he was fronting Queen, not Van Halen. Sadly, the record was the same – it just didn't mesh. Add to that, the songwriting was weak and the performances all over the place. Scattered would be a good word to describe it, along with uninspired.

2. Judas Priest - Turbo - No, really. Who told KK and Glenn they needed to change their tone and that synth guitars were the way to go? I can't believe this is the follow up to the one-two punch of Screaming For Vengeance and Defenders Of The Faith. A rare misstep for this band and out of respect for the rest of their career, we'll leave it at that.

1. Queen - Made In Heaven - Indeed, I'm sure they wish it was truly "made in heaven" so they could have been around Freddie and completed this properly. Again, out of respect for what came before and the fact that Mercury is equaled by no one when it comes to being a front man, all I can say is that they deserved a better curtain call than this.

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Dan Haggety
[The Mosh Pit, Fact Or Fiction, Reviewer]
(1x Champion)

5. Van Halen - III - The much ballyhooed return to form and launch of Van Halen v3.0, everyone was excited to see what Van Cherone was going to do. Eddy acted motivated on the hype circuit, and Cherone himself sounded like it could be a new interesting dynamic to the band. Nuh-Uh. It was a completely uninspired performance, as if all the energy had been bled dry by years of the band leaking from some imbalance. A few creative ideas, but this just dragged front to back ,sounding like all the discarded ideas from a completely different band. This isn't even worth bashing, as it is if anything just sad. Sometimes it is better to burn out than fade away.

Although, just for the record, I have always dug the song "Dirt Water Dog". A diamond lost in the rough of creative minds listless on the burnt ends of their career.

4. – Judas Priest - Turbo - The 80's and the mighty metal gods we're running the edge of metal masterpieces and pop music, a little bit of something for everyone. Certainly not the immortal run of industry changing tunes the band produced in the 70's, but still a great run of classics; but then the band, along with the label (who cut their "Twin Turbo" concept down to a single album of "The best" cuts) put out Turbo. OK – First track is really cool, and it's the title track. I'm down with that. But then things just dropped into everything that sucked about the pop metal scene in the 80's. Light tunes with no teeth. Any edge filed off for radio friendly production. And someone thought it was a bloody brilliant idea to let one of the guitar players use a keytar. I mean, really. They had one of the players that invented the whole concept of twin leads in a metal band, from the right hand of Thin Lizzy matched with the left hand of Sabbath and Deep Purple, and they circumcise that manna from heaven with an f'n keytar. Mind-boggling.

3. – Iron Maiden - The X Factor - Iron Maiden was certainly in a state of decline in the 90's. The band, like a number of artists from the early 80's and 70's, was hit by the double whammy of changing times and running on creative fumes. Maiden was a beast that was further split by the departure of singer Bruce Dickinson. And while the exit of the air raid siren might have been considered a disaster, I was heartened by the fact that the band was picking up the front man of the excellent band Wolfsbane: Blaze Bayley. I was certain this was exactly what the venerable institution needed - New blood to update and add new depth to the band. To bad we got none of that. It was more like they lost a control that kept all the bad ideas from storming the gates, and those ideas just went into steroid overdrive. The same rehashed lyrical concepts, added to new dumber ideas, married to a few decent thoughts, totally castrated by pointless musical meandering. I mean, I like progressive musical masturbation as much as the next prog fan, but listening to needless noodling around in badly mixed self absorption would be masochistic if it wasn't so damn boring. And this lifeless and formless structure has the extra endearing characteristic of still managing to be formulistic enough to be repeated ad-nausea through the rest of the album. Gloriously, we also get half the album getting over six minutes of it per painful shot. Like many disappointments, I've grown to like some songs on this album (like "Sign of the Cross"), but it doesn't change the fact that Blaze deserved better than his run in Maiden, and disappointment abounds for everyone involved.

2. – Motley Crue - Theatre of Pain - Motley Crue was a different creature in its early days. There debut was a sleaze metal, punked out bar set that was great. Their sophomore album, Shout At The Devil stepped the game up a notch: Down and dirty, attitude and edgy, hooky and banging. Fun stuff. But then the band not only embraced the emerging MTV glam trends in their next album, the oh-so-appropriately-named Theatre of Pain, but they even helped to create the God awful stereo types that came to represent that genre of music. With apologize to Blake, cover tune "Helter Skelter" from Shout was a fun trashy rip through the Beatles classic, so what does the band do here? They decide to copycat Quite Riot and find a dumb song to cover into a hit: "Smoking in the Boys Room". Way to trade down guys. I could digress through all the inane pop songs that were so devoid of the life and energy this band was capable of, all sacrificed for the pleasure of videos featuring the band in drag, but I'll just end on the real final crime: "Home Sweet Home". Yes, the first true metal power ballad, a pox that would result in every album released thereafter, by any hair band, being forced to have a chick-hit added just to insure artistic individuality was stamped out. Bottom line – I wanted another dirty rocker that me and my buds could drink to. What I got was a worthless piece of sell-out that only my buds kid sister wanted to listen to. Disappointed is an understatement, as this crosses over into a crime.

1. – Metallica - St. Anger - "It's a return to form", they said. "It's a throw back to Masters", they said. What I got was none of that and a whole lot less than expectations, while a whole lot more of "What the hell?!" No solos, maybe one or two riffs of note, out of tune instruments, out of whack production, vocals shot by the very abuse the inane lyrics droned on about, all lovingly wrapped into the biggest bucket full of what the fuck to ever rape my ears. I could have understood them playing off of the Black Album. I could have understood them playing off the hard rock albums they made later, or add to that sound with some of the evolved trends in alternative and rock. What I wanted was the equivalent of leaning your child has been accepted into Mensa, and what I got was the realization my kid was the slow kid who eats paste and gets stuff stuck in his nose. Disappointment is to kind of a word for the feelings this albatross invoked.

I've forgiven this album over time, and even have come to appreciate a few of its idiosyncrasies, but nothing can ever replace the total let down I got the first time this hit my CD player, put on a soiled white wife-beater T-shirt, and beat the shit out of my expectations.

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Jeff Modzelewski
[B-Sides, Reviewer]

5. Guns and Roses - The Spaghetti Incident? - Another early sign of Axl Rose's insanity. After following up their mega-debut "Appetite for Destruction" with the ambitious and amazing "Use Your Illusion" albums, their much-anticipated follow up was a bunch of relatively unknown cover songs? Are you kidding me? And, frankly, only a few of them are any good anyways.

4. Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth - After the spectacular "The Downward Spiral" and the very solid follow-up "The Fragile," expectations were high for "With Teeth." Sadly, nothing on the album lives up to those expectations. It's relatively weak throughout, and the singles were very poorly chosen. "The Hand That Feeds" can easily be considered one of the worst lead singles of all time.

3. Fleetwood Mac - Tusk - Another weak follow-up, this one to one of the greatest albums of all time, "Rumors." Tusk was too long, too odd, and lacked any of the punch of their previous two albums. It was extremely ambitious, and there are many good points to the album, but the double-disc was a major letdown for a band that could do no wrong on their previous two efforts.

2. Metallica - St. Anger - After the mediocre "Load" and "Reload" albums, everyone hoped and prayed for a re-charged Metallica. I heard some of the rough demos of "St. Anger," and I was very excited about the CD. Sadly, upon hearing the completed disc, I realized that they never went on to actually produce any of those rough tracks. The drums sounded horrible. The vocals sounded abysmal. And where oh where were the guitar solos? I used to expect Metallica to do something great. Now I'm just hoping that they don't do anything too horrible.

1. Dave Matthews Band - Everyday - In 2000, the Dave Matthews Band began working on their follow-up to their spectacular "Before These Crowded Streets." Before completing the album, they hit the road, debuting many new songs along the way. I was at the show where "Bartender," "Digging a Ditch," "Grey Street" and "Sweet Up and Down" all made their debut. As the summer went on, "Busted Stuff," "Grace is Gone," "Raven," and "JTR" all joined the ranks. The fan base was ecstatic. These were amazing songs, and their summer tour only increased the excitement about the new album. Sadly, something went wrong along the way.

The band scrapped the studio sessions, split with longtime producer Steve Lillywhite, and Dave went to work with Glenn Ballard. The result, "Everyday," included none of the dark, epic songs that the fans expected. It included very little of the jamming that they were accustomed to. And it hardly featured any of the band other than Dave in a significant way. This was just not what DMB fans wanted. What made it even worse was when the Lillywhite sessions were leaked on the internet, they were even better than originally anticipated. Most of these songs eventually saw the light on "Busted Stuff," but, without Lillywhite at the helm, it just wasn't the same.

Overall, "Everyday" isn't a bad album. It contains some very good songs, most notably "What You Are," "Fool To Think," and "Everyday." However, after getting the fans' hopes so high with the songs that were debuted on the Summer 2000 tour, the album was a huge letdown.

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Jesse Coy
[Starship Exile]
(2x Champion)

5. Audioslave – Out of Exile - nearly all the other bands I'm including here have a long history, except these guys. You can, of course, make an argument that if you included both Soundgarden and Rage Against the Machine's output, you have a lot of material to work with. Anyhow, this is a clear case of really liking a particular album, and then being rather bummed by a follow-up. Some people called Audioslave by another name, Soundgarden II. I wasn't one of those folks, and found this band's debut as a fascinating blend of where the singer came from and where the band came from. It was unique… but the follow-up? I listened to it and listened to it, and tried some more. And all that I could think was, DULL. Never picked up their third and final release. I'll give it a few more years, when I can buy it mega-cheaply, used.

4. (tie) Anthrax/ Megadeth – Stomp 442/ Risk - so I will squeeze two into this one, and they really go well together. One could argue that I could also add a Metallica album to this grouping, since we're talking thrash here. But the truth is, I never went beyond their black album. And to be honest, I've always felt they were overrated. I think I liked Anthrax and Megadeth a bit more. So what happened to thrash? What happened to these guys? One simple explanation is that in the 90's, most thrash acts (MOST… not Slayer or Testament, for example) became heavy metal in the same way that many grindcore and death metal acts became thrash. That's my opinion, too.

Anyhow, with Anthrax, yes, I missed Joey Belladonna. But Sound of White Noise was sort of interesting. So I was willing to see what would happen next. Next was Stomp 442… BORING. Really, it was a faceless album to me. On the next couple albums that followed, I thought they improved. But to me, Anthrax in the 90's was all about looking for an identity they never found. And I think it's too bad that the recent reunion of the classic lineup didn't yield at least one studio album.

As for Megadeth, Rust in Peace was a great redemption album. Countdown to Extinction had its moments. But then (and I stuck with them at a distance) one album after another, they got duller and duller. It ends with Risk, which really was the bottom of the barrel for me. Last year I saw Megadeth live. They were in great form. I did pick up the album that followed Risk… The World Needs a Hero. It was certainly better than much of what they'd done in the 90's, yet not as good as some were claiming. Still, at least it was a return toward a better path.

3. Pink Floyd – The Piper at the Gates of Dawn - I first got this one long ago, maybe the early 90's, when I was exploring Pink Floyd's early material. Syd Barrett fans might disagree, but personally, Pink Floyd's first two albums were too hippy-dippy for me. At the time when I got the album, I thought… what the hell is this? In the mid-90's, I sold the first two albums. Ten years later, because I like having complete discographies of bands, I picked them up again. I do really like "Astronomy Domine," though I wonder how much that was because I'd heard Voivod's version of it first, and love their take on it. "Lucifer Sam" and "Bike" are fun. But still, my initial reaction was disappointment, especially because this was such an acclaimed album.

2. Ministry – Animositisomina - in 1989, three albums blew me out of the water, expanding my music tastes a great degree. They were Faith No More's The Real Thing, Danzig's self-titled debut (yes, I know, that one came out in '88… I just got it late), and Ministry's The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste. Those three albums remain all-time favorites for me. So after quite a long wait, I followed Ministry through to Psalm 69. Okay, not as good, but we're talking metal industrial… it had some very good moments. Then there was another long wait, and finally a new album that was… uh, a little less good. And so went Ministry throughout the 90's. Animositisomina represents to me the epitome of their metal sludge sound (really, there wasn't much industrial left). As a matter of fact, it might go well with the band's debut, With Sympathy (HA!), which I'd sold, but
recently reacquired at a higher cost. Al wants to eradicate the existence of that one. I will say that his trilogy of anti-George W. Bush albums was better than I thought they'd be. But still, I miss The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste.

1. (tie) Iron Maiden/ Queensryche – Brave New World/ Q2K -here's my second tie, and I think they go together quite well as far as being in the heavy metal genre. First on Iron Maiden, let me say that in the 80's, they were a favorite band for sure. Bruce has an amazing voice, of course. So early in the 90's, two heavy metal juggernauts separate from their very distinctive vocalists (Iron Maiden and Judas Priest). It was interesting to follow the comparisons, though we're not talking about Judas Priest here. I'll confine it to Iron Maiden. So Bruce as a solo artist… sure, that first solo album, Tattooed Millionaire was much more hard rock, but I liked it. Balls to Picasso? I friggin' love the opener, "Cyclops," along with several other tracks there. It was a great dark flipside to his first solo effort. Meanwhile, Iron Maiden got Blaze as their new singer. Understandably, it was
difficult to tune into X Factor. But I picked it up. I gave it a try. The next one I grabbed was a solo Bruce release… Accident of Birth. Cool, I thought. Adrian Smith is on this one. I got it, listened to it, and aside from "The Magician" (great track) I was just disappointed. It didn't stick. I've since gotten nearly all the Iron Maiden and solo Bruce releases, and I've just wanted SO MUCH to really like one of them, but it hasn't happened. So I guess I'll list Brave New World here because that was the much touted reunion of Bruce with the Iron Maiden camp. It just didn't do it for me.

Queensryche is another band who I think simply deteriorated throughout the 90's, seeking some identity they never found. They also have an album that is one of my all-time favorites, as in Operation: Mindcrime. I followed them through with Empire. Okay, not what I was expecting… but okay. From then on, album after album, it was just not so good. Their lowest point for me came in 1999 with Q2K. There're just some embarrassingly bland songs on that one. As for their 2003 follow-up, Tribe, I didn't see much of an improvement. This one ends happily, though, because in '06, they issued a sequel to Operation: Mindcrime that was one of the best heavy metal albums of the year as far as I'm concerned. Far from a rehash, it did revisit the original story, but was able to stand on its own. An album of covers followed… and I'm curious to see where they'll go next.

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Blake Lauderback
[Ask 411 Music, Reviewer]
(1x Champion)

Disclaimer: I am well aware that all of my choices are less than a decade old, but I have been much more disappointed by music made in the 2000's. Who knows, maybe it is just more painful since I am not as far removed from the tragedies.

5. Weezer - Weezer (The Green Album) - Now, let me start by saying that it isn't my intention to badmouth this or any other Weezer album. I have gone on record over at Ask 411 Music as an unapologetic Weezer fan. What broke my heart about this particular disc though, is the ridiculously short album length. The total run time? 28:34 Now keep in mind, the band's faithful followers had been waiting five years since their last album, Pinkerton. In that time frame there was much discussion about lead singer River Cuomo's massive collection of demos and the fact that he had recorded hundreds of potential songs. All of that hype and time spent waiting and we get less than a half hours worth of music. Again, I love the album, and it is a hell of a half hour, but it was still a let down to pop it in and then find yourself asking, "Is that it?" before you even knew what happened.

4. The Who - Endless Wire - It is against everything that I have in me to speak poorly of these guys, and I take full responsibility for the let down here. Like a few others here, it isn't that it is a bad album, just that the expectations were unattainable. I don't really know what I expected, but on the first listen I was crushed. After a few listens I came to terms a bit and began to enjoy the album, but I will never forget that sinking feeling in my gut when I realized that this album would never reach my unreachable dreams.

3. Maroon 5 - It Won't Be Soon Before Long - Now, when Maroon 5 first came out with their debut album, Songs About Jane, I was avidly against them. Upon first listen, my first impression was that they were a bunch of overproduced pop stars trying to pass as a rock band. However, my roommate had a copy of the CD and insisted on playing it damn near any time we were in the car together. So what happened? I started to get hooked. What I enjoyed about the band was that they had a little bit of jazz to their sound. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that the band might have some great potential as long as they continued to mature and show off those "jazzy" aspects. When I heard that the band had another new album coming out, I was very optimistic that the band had grown up musically and that they had blossomed into a cool crossover band. Man, was I way off or what? It Won't Be Soon Before Long is loaded with everything I loathe about the band without any of those pesky things that I enjoyed. I learned my lesson about optimism.

2. Dave Matthews Band - Stand Up - I am not exactly 100% sure on what it is about this album that irks me. I love most of DMB's material, and I so wanted to like this album. I suppose that I went into my first listening of the album with a bit of a bad taste anyway, because I wasn't a huge fan of the album's first single, "American Baby." However, I thought that I was being open-minded in spite of that. I won't say that this is a bad album by any means, but it is quite depressing to listen to knowing what the band is capable of. It just seems too overproduced for this group. These guys don't need to sound polished and produced, they are the Dave Matthews Band, and band that can jam like crazy and that has musical talent running out of every pour. Just turn on the tape, let them go, and get out of the way Mr. Producer.

1. Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head - It hurts me to admit that I ever even liked this band, but when the broke onto the scene with the single "Yellow" and their debut album Parachutes, I was pretty on board with the band. The album certainly had a few moments that I felt dragged a bit, but all in all, I liked what I heard. When the dropped their sophomore effort, A Rush of Blood to the Head, I was intrigued to say the least. I quickly picked up my copy and hoped for the best. After a moment, I swear that I ejected the CD to make sure that I had actually picked up the new CD and not another copy of the first record. No, I had the right one, it just sounded identical. And so began Coldplay's career of releasing uninspired and rehashed music. The most irritating thing about this entire album was spending the next year or so hearing about how great and innovative it was. Thankfully, it finally subsided… just in time for the world to proclaim their next album of the same uninspired and rehashed crap to be an instant masterpiece. To be honest, I felt isolated, like a character in a horror movie that is trying to save the world, but no one will listen. So in summation… if you listen to too much Coldplay, you will eventually turn into a musical zombie.

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There you have it ladies and gents… the albums that have left us a shell of our former selves, sending us into a downward spiral of disappointment.

Don't forget to vote for your favorite column, and send in your own list of tragic disappointments… we can bond together in a little group therapy.

Join us next week as we, the writers of the Music Zone, take on the task of listing our Top 5 Opening Tracks. In preparation, we are listening to every CD in our collections… but only the first song on each.

Until next time, try to fight back those tears of disappointment.