Albums you were disappointed in based on the "big" song from them

[hbelkins]

So ... how many times did you hear a song and really like it, and then go buy the CD (or album or cassette) and find yourself totally disappointed that the rest of the set sounded nothing like the song that lured you in?

Example #1 for me is probably Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness by Smashing Pumpkins. If you expected the whole album to sound like "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" you were in for a huge letdown. And it was a double-CD, too. I wasted my money on it way back then.

A much older example would be Spectres by Blue Oyster Cult. The rest of the album sounded little like "Godzilla."

[briantroutman]

Maybe "disappointed"  isn't the appropriate description, but I can think of some albums I bought in which the hit single was somewhat non-representative of the rest of the tracks. And in general, I think I usually warmed up to those other tracks, even though they were different.

One that comes to mind is Graceland by Paul Simon. "You Can Call Me Al"  was a listener-friendly pop song I enjoyed occasionally hearing on the radio as a young child in the late '80s. And as a kid, I thought the video with Paul and Chevy Chase was funny. So Graceland was one of the albums I bought as a teenager when I finally had some spending money. But much of the rest of the album is quite a departure from the breezy '80s pop of "Al" , though I grew to like much of the rest of it in different ways.

My dad had "Hello, It's Me"  as a single on a 45 (again, very accessible, straight-ahead pop music) and I liked the song, so I bought Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? (again, as a teenager). Except for "I Saw the Light" , the rest of the tracks were progressively less accessible–as if he intentionally baited you with a hook-y pop song and then got progressively weirder just to see how long you'd stick around. But I grew to love the entire album eventually–a pattern that would repeat for me with every other Todd Rundgren album I bought.

[kphoger]

I actually like most of the songs on the album, but I bet a lot of people were disappointed in Chumbawamba album 'Tubthumper' when they bought it after the success of the song 'Tubthumping'.

[bugo]

So ... how many times did you hear a song and really like it, and then go buy the CD (or album or cassette) and find yourself totally disappointed that the rest of the set sounded nothing like the song that lured you in?

Example #1 for me is probably Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness by Smashing Pumpkins. If you expected the whole album to sound like "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" you were in for a huge letdown. And it was a double-CD, too. I wasted my money on it way back then.

If you bought a Pumpkins CD expecting all the songs to sound the same, you don't know much about the Pumpkins. Billy Corgan is one of the most diverse songwriters to ever live. None of his songs sound the same.

[bandit957]

This is why I usually buyed 45 RPM singles instead of the whole album. Later, they discontinued vinyl singles, so I started getting cassette singles. Singles are "the people's format."

Some whole albums though are pretty good. I have the album 'Heartbeat City' by the Cars on vinyl, and I think all its tracks are good. I don't know why I got this album, or if someone just decided to give me this album, but I must have been middle school age when I got it. But it's a pretty good album. I still have it after 35 years.

Men At Work had some good album cuts too.

Also, some singles did have a good flip side.

[nexus73]

"The Time Has Come" by the Chambers Brothers is on the list of one hit and a bunch of sh*t.  Their hit was called "Time Has Come Today", released as a long version and a shorter one suitable for regular airplay.  It came out as a single.  Then came the idea of making an album.  None of those other songs amounted to a hill of beans unfortunately.

Rick

[ErmineNotyours]

The worst offenders are when a group gets a separate producer or outside songwriters for the proposed hit single.  The rest of the songs on the album don't stand a chance.  For instance, Gene Loves Jezebel's "Desire" was produced by someone else than most of the rest of the album it was from.

A Canadian group Eye Eye had a song called "X-Ray Eyes" that was good.  When I got the cassette, I saw that "X-Ray Eyes" was written by someone named Buzz Cason, which sounds like a slick showbiz name.  The rest of the songs were weak.  It wasn't until the internet came around that I could look up who Buzz Cason was.  His only other hit song was "Everlasting Love," (which sounds similar to "X-Ray Eyes") and he produced a lot of country music.

[DJStephens]

Lindsay Buckingham.  Trouble.   One huge song, and the rest was likely leftovers from Tusk. 

[roadman65]

Go Gos and Vacation. The title song was great but the rest was not.

[1995hoo]

Hunting High and Low by a-ha. Everyone knows "Take On Me." Great song, especially back in 2012 when Michael Morse used it as his walk-up music in the late innings and the Nats Park crowd started singing along with it (there is scary video somewhere online of me at a ballgame trying, and failing, to hit the high notes). I bought the LP and did not particularly like any of the other songs on it.

I suppose I could listen to it again to see if my opinion and taste might have changed in the years since I got that record, though. The classic example to me of a record I didn't much care for when it first came out, but that I now appreciate, is Springsteen's Tunnel of Love. I was 14 years old when he released that. It was a radical change from Born in the USA and his live album, but more importantly, as a 14-year-old I didn't really understand the album. While I have not been, and hope never to be, divorced, I can appreciate what the album is about a lot more 30 years later than I could back then.

[Paulinator66]

Peter Cetera's self titled album.

I bought it because I loved the song, "Livin' in the Limelight" but the rest of the album was nothing but snoozers.

[hbelkins]

Peter Cetera's self titled album.

I bought it because I loved the song, "Livin' in the Limelight" but the rest of the album was nothing but snoozers.

I bought it because I was a huge Chicago fan, but I'd already lost most of my interest in that group after Chicago 17 and the pop-fest it became. A far cry from even the previous album, much less the late 60s and 70s stuff. Not sure I bought another Cetera solo release after that one.

[bugo]

I am not really a fan, but I remember listening to ...Twice Shy by Great White. The big hit single was "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" which was a cover song. The rest of the songs sounded nothing like it. The next Great White album was full of songs that sounded like "Once Bitten..."

[hbelkins]

I am not really a fan, but I remember listening to ...Twice Shy by Great White. The big hit single was "Once Bitten, Twice Shy" which was a cover song. The rest of the songs sounded nothing like it. The next Great White album was full of songs that sounded like "Once Bitten..."

I was a Great White fan from their first album. That period saw them take a more pop-metal turn. Compare them to Skid Row, which started out a bit more on the poppish side and then went heavier.

[1995hoo]

I believe Ian Hunter (formerly of Mott the Hoople) was the original singer of "Once Bitten, Twice Shy."

[csw]

I generally don't buy an album unless I like every song. Fortunately, I usually like every song, so my collection is at about 90 and growing.

[spooky]

I generally don't buy an album unless I like every song. Fortunately, I usually like every song, so my collection is at about 90 and growing.

The old guys in here remember when it wasn't an option to hear every song before buying an album.

[csw]

I generally don't buy an album unless I like every song. Fortunately, I usually like every song, so my collection is at about 90 and growing.

The old guys in here remember when it wasn't an option to hear every song before buying an album.

Let me guess, you had to walk 6 miles both ways, uphill, in the rain to school every day, too.

[jeffandnicole]

I generally don't buy an album unless I like every song. Fortunately, I usually like every song, so my collection is at about 90 and growing.

The old guys in here remember when it wasn't an option to hear every song before buying an album.

Let me guess, you had to walk 6 miles both ways, uphill, in the rain to school every day, too.

It's uphill 10 miles in the snow both ways.  And they didn't cancel school because of snow.

But the point is valid...the way music is listened to today is incomparably different than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Although no doubt there's some other players in the game, iTunes totally changed how music was purchased.  On the other hand, Napster totally changed it for the worst, especially for the artists.

[spooky]

I generally don't buy an album unless I like every song. Fortunately, I usually like every song, so my collection is at about 90 and growing.

The old guys in here remember when it wasn't an option to hear every song before buying an album.

Let me guess, you had to walk 6 miles both ways, uphill, in the rain to school every day, too.

get off my lawn!

[formulanone]

I generally don't buy an album unless I like every song. Fortunately, I usually like every song, so my collection is at about 90 and growing.

The old guys in here remember when it wasn't an option to hear every song before buying an album.

Some of the music stores I would frequent in the early-'90s allowed you to listen to the used CDs, which helped avoid this problem. A few years later, some of them allowed you to listen to listen to new albums as well as used ones.

Pre-1990, I wasn't buying that much music, anyhow. Maybe one cassette every other month.

[hbelkins]

I was typically a fan of bands, not necessarily songs or albums. Therefore, I had everything in the catalog of the bands I liked. I kept on buying their albums even they had a particularly bad period (Chicago after "16," those three awful Rush albums following "Signals," etc.) A few times, I'd really like one album (Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog," for example, or Blue Oyster Cult's "Agents of Fortune") but would then buy two or three other releases and find them to be nothing like the album I really enjoyed. Even albums I really liked had songs I would skip over. There are very few albums on which I would consider every song to be a good one, and will actually play the whole thing through.

I've quit doing that. I rarely buy music anymore. I haven't bought a Chicago or Aerosmith album in ages, and those were two of my favorite groups in my high school days. Same for the Stones. I got into them when I was in college and bought most of their back catalog, but haven't bought anything of theres since "Steel Wheels" and that's been out for 25 or 30 years.

[bandit957]

Remember when Chicago had a song where they tried to sound like Devo? Actually, a lot of bands did back then.

[KEVIN_224]

And which song of theirs would it be? My brother is a big Chicago fan. Maybe I can ask him?

[bandit957]

And which song of theirs would it be? My brother is a big Chicago fan. Maybe I can ask him?

"Along Comes A Woman"