"Past their prime" albums that are actually worth a listen - Page 2

"Desire" is one of my favorite Bob Dylan albums. I like his strange stories and tangents at least as much as the popularly accepted mid-60s period.

I don't believe they were past their prime, I also prefer Dio.
I was thinking these were albums made by bands that were thought to be past their prime. Most people gave up on Sabbath well before Dio came along and they got better.

Basically - I agree with you.

Ah, got ya.

It IS a great album. Neil Diamond is a tremendously underrated songwriter; maybe not a "genius" but certainly a guy who can come up with great melodies and terrific hooks. Sitting him down with a guitar in front of a mic was LONG past due.

100% agreed; while the albums may not have been commercial juggernauts, Pearl Jam have never disappeared from the public consciousness, do well on a commercial basis (at the very least in terms of concert attendance if not album sales), and as far as musically, have had a consistently solid-to-excellent output for going on 16 years now. They're in pretty rare air.

Nobody seems to begrudge The Spielberg his daddy issues.

Andrew E and Justin K, thanks for the feedback. I've heard about half of "Imagine" and clips of "All Things Must Pass" and probably need to finally get both of those. Not sure that I've heard anything from "Band On the Run", but will look into that too. I'm sure this isn't a rare feeling, but I've always been very mixed on the post-Beatles Paul I've heard. He never lost that great voice, but I get the impression that he fell off in the songwriting dept in his solo/Wings efforts. In any case, I'm still interested in checking out a little of his stronger post-Beatles stuff. Solo George Harrison seems to be a safer bet. The little I've heard of "All Things Must Pass" was great. As for Lennon, I'll save him for last because I might get caught up in an obsessive solo Lennon phase once I start down that road.

I plan on exploring a lot of Dylan's stuff this year and "Desire" is near the top of my list. I haven't heard the whole album yet, but "Hurricane" is one bad-ass song.

That's a great album

Imagine and All Things Must Pass are on par with all Beatles albums. All Things might even be better than certain albums...actually, yes, it definitely beats Let It Be, Help and Beatles For Sale. These are landmark albums that should not be considered as comebacks.

As for McCartney, it seems to be more about personal taste. I personally love the first couple of albums he did right after the Beatles, but some people think it's too pussy or pop. He continued to make great albums through the mid-70's with Band On The Run, and possibly Wings at the Speed of Sound. Check those out if you're feeling the McCartney.

I think for all three of them, you'd have to at least go to albums produced after 1975 to classify anything as a strong album produced after the prime.

But you want to listen to Bowie's 'Outside', for it is fine.

The buzz around town is that Tiffany's "Just Me" is jawdroppingly amazing.

In another vein, X's See How We Are is one of my favorites of theirs and came out years after what most, including the band members, consider their best work (their first three albums). True, it's more along the lines of the Americana that John Doe would eventually explore in his solo work than the hyper rockabilly-on-meth of Los Angeles and Wild Gift, but it's such a great collection of straightforward rock songs with perhaps some of Doe's and Exene's best lyrics.

Oddly, the best moment is Dave Alvin's "Fourth of July," which I'm pretty sure he wrote during his brief stint as guitarist for the band, but I'm not sure if he actually played on the version that made the album (he'd since been replaced by Tony Gilkyson). Alvin also did the song as a solo artist, but I consider the See How We Are version the definitive one. It's anthemic, like "Born to Run" on a slightly smaller scale.

If it weren't for all of the scandalous freakshow stuff, I really believe that people would still be raving about what an amazing artist MJ was (is?). Does anyone disagree?

PS - "Off the Wall" was and always will be a masterpiece.

I don't disagree with the "was," but I do with the "is." I don't think anyone currently disputes the greatness of Thriller, even with all of the baggage he accumulated after the fact. I never took a liking to Bad, though i acknowledge it's probably very good at what it attempts to do. All I can really do in terms of evaluating Jackson post-Thriller is to go off the singles - since he's a pop act, I don't think this is necessarily a bad way to do things. Pop acts aren't generally known for their "deep cuts," though feel free to set me straight on this if I'm wrong about Jackson.

Anyway, Jackson's diminishing commercial returns may have a lot to do with his public image. His diminishing critical cred, I think, has to do with the fact that he's just not as good as he used to be.

It's fairly remarkable when any pop artist manages to maintain cred over a long period of time. Unlike rock, country, or jazz, pop music (for the sake of argument, pop music is singles-centric and geared toward popular success on the radio) is often about establishing continual appeal to the mainstream through adaptation, yet maintaining something so distinctive that other, younger artists can't replace you. Jackson managed it for a few years, but his tunes just sort of weakened, and his attempts to update his sound paled in comparison to his biggest hits. Madonna and Elvis may be the only pop artists who managed to pull this off for multiple decades. Even Prince can't quite be held to the same standard, because, while he's occasionally been a pop artist, he approaches his work like a jazz artist - he follows his muse where it takes him, charts be damned.

Jackson's essentially a relic of the 70s and 80s now, and I don't think this has as much to do with his thoroughly bizarre public image as one might suspect. He was never a chameleon, and his medium of choice (dance pop - always subject to the whims of the young people of the moment) went to places where they have velvet ropes to keep out middle-aged people, perhaps Madonna aside, although even that's arguable these days. Also, while Jackson the person should probably have a longer rap sheet than 50 Cent's, his attempts to sound badass have always been quaint and charming - dance pop took a turn for the sexy and slightly dangerous, and, contrary to the album title, Jackson's music has never been dangerous.

For the record, I only threw the "is" out there as optional because I stopped following his music after "Thriller". But I still think that, due to all of the "baggage", his legacy has been so badly damaged (for fans and music critics/journalists alike) that it's had a profound affect on how people remember/qualify his music - even the classic stuff. I admit that I'm guilty of doing the same thing.

Could be. I still see Thriller pop up on "Best of" lists all the time, but I can't imagine it's maintained its sales in the way that other "classic" albums like Led Zeppelin IV, What's Going On, or Dark Side of the Moon have (due to new generations and old fans upgrading their media).

On the other hand, I suspect the same fate has befallen Like a Virgin, although Madonna has only been accused of trying to adopt children, not fuck them (well, except in that "Open Your Heart" video, maybe). Classic pop albums are often crippled, sales-wise, by the fact that they're designed to be 'of the moment.' Even those that transcend disposable status are somewhat hindered by radio overplay at the time, dated production, etc. Disposability is a concept not often acknowledged in regard to rock artists*, so their work often sticks around longer for better or worse (why, oh, why do we still care about John Mellencamp???). When rock artists attempt pop success (take Born in the U.S.A., for instance), that work is usually the stuff that ages worst.

* Heck, the most visible rock band that often acknowledged its own disposability, the Sex Pistols, still managed to get canonized, and their album almost certainly sells far better than it did upon release (in the States, at least - disposability and pop music in the UK is a Take That/Oasis-faced chimera that I'm not ready to face).

I've always been more of an admirer of Prince than a fan and have actually only owned two of his albums ever: the "Batman" ST and "Musicology". I traded the former off long ago and friend gave me an advance copy of "Musicology", which I liked it pretty well. But to the point - since I'm no authority on the subject, when would you say Prince passed his prime? Sometime last year, I saw one of his concerts from a recent tour on tv and there is no doubt that the man can still put on a show. But if I had to guess, his albums don't sell the way they used to. And in keeping with the main subject of this thread, which ones would you call his come-back albums? Also, I guess since I'm so un-schooled about his catalog, maybe I should correct that someday.

I think the Prince circles pinpoint the Batman ST as the shark jump point. Purple Rain is tits. I think he's still very relevant though.

Prince is still a stellar performer, and his latest record (3121) went straight to number one last year, but fans are split on whether or not he's passed his prime.

Some, like myself, still think he has it in him to create something special - But that intangible talent hasn't really surfaced in a while, as his last few albums have been easily digestible, unchallenging fair that lack... princeliness.

And yeah, Batman was probably his biggest jump the shark moment - But I point to his gloriously inept "Under the Cherry Moon" movie in '86 as the real deal.

I'm far from a Prince expert, but I find it odd that anyone would consider his "shark jumping" to have come anytime before he had the New Power Generation backing him up in the early to mid-90s. That wasn't even really a comeback, but a continuation of his 80s work. Whatever lousiness that might have come before in the shape of "Batdance" or whatever was more a temporary slump than a slipping into permanent irrelevancy. I think the best case to be made for Prince moving past his prime would have to be the post-NPG years when even many of his big fans jumped ship, but, even with that in mind, the last two albums certainly had their moments.

Prince is more along the lines of Dylan or Neil Young - he might have his slumps, but you can never count him out. Ultimately, he'll have a lifelong "prime" with lapses.

well it seems Prince is just churning out the records these days. Musicology was great because it was a long time hearing from him.

Now before you can remember when 3121 came out (last year?), He has a new album coming out this summer (according to the commercials on TV).

I'm pretty sure he was churning out about a studio album a year before Musicology, too. My understanding is that they just were too experimental or too crappy to get mainstream attention, or they were online only releases (What, you never heard about The Chocolate Invasion, or The Slaughterhouse? Me, neither - I had to look them up.).

I've studied Prince pretty closely over the years. I came to his music at the Batman ST, so I didn't really have that basis for disappointment, and I've always liked that album. Prince was the first person for whom I went out of my way to be at the store the day one of his CDs hit. I loved the fact that even though he was working within the rigid structures of pop music, he still found so many ways to explore sounds and musical relationships. Plus, it was funky. And I loved getting a new Prince album knowing that no matter how much I've listened to his other stuff, I still really had no idea what I was about to hear.

 

Prince was gloriously eclectic and experimental and weird, and for me the last gasp of that music was the Graffiti Bridge ST. It wasn't a great album, but it still had that playfulness that I appreciated. The next album was Diamond and Pearls, and by that time, he'd started moving more toward mainstream sounds. Not completely, but closer and closer with each album. It reminds me of Michael Jackson. I liked the sound of Off The Wall and Thriller. I didn't hear anything else like him. Then he started chasing R&B trends too heavily. Not that that's a bad thing in itself, but he started sounding too much like everyone else, and truth be told, was bland by comparison (musically, at least).

 

Prince still continued to record different kinds of music, but releases became much more conventional and mainstream in tone. When he opened his online music club, more of the eclectic studio material was released, and that helped. So too with projects like Crystal Ball and Old Friends 4 Sale and Emancipation and even Chaos and Disorder. Chaos and Disorder was a middle finger to Warner Brothers, but I would still listen to some of the material from time to time. Old Friends 4 Sale had some good jazz on it. Emancipation was 3 discs of material (most of which I consider filler), but I believe that a truly fantastic single-disc album could be culled from it, along with a few b-sides. Crystal Ball, probably the same, if less so. Frankly, it was just great to have a few albums that cleared out The (legendary) Vault a little.

 

The Black Album was finally released, and it simply wasn't as strong as assumed. New Power Soul wasn't great; my favorite song was probably the hidden track "Wasted Kisses". Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic was another snoozer, though "Prettyman" was a nice old-school funk track. I really enjoyed The Gold Experience; though it wasn't brilliant, it was fun, well done, and had real life to it, as did the Love Symbol album.

 

I dropped out with Musicology, though. Title track was nice, but I didn't feel the rest of it. I've mostly ignored the material since. I recently bought the Lotusflower set at Target for $1.99 (3 albums), and only really liked the rock-oriented album. The funk album should've been the jam, but it felt like a disc full of bad re-treads of old filler tracks.

 

But at any moment I know he could release an album that would melt my face off. I agree with the poster above that Prince is more like Dylan et al -- he'll have one long Prime with digressions in quality. But he has to be interested, and when I listen to his more recent work, it just feels like he's going through the motions.

I've always had an odd fascination with artist's late-periods. I'm of the unpopular opinion that, even though some of it suffers from his insecure trend-hopping, everything Bowie put out from Outside onwards is at least decent, and sometimes very good indeed. Earthling is the one that suffers most from dated production, but actually has some of his best later songwriting - I always point to this painfully good acoustic video of one of the songs to prove this point. What I wouldn't give for an unplugged version of that whole album.

I'm late the party on Bowie, but I respect the heck out of what he's done. What little I've heard of his later stuff, I've dug. 

Speaking of Bowie, I dug up Aladdin Sane for some random reason today and spun it about 7 times throughout the course of the day.  For me I always tend to gravitate towards Hunky Dory, Ziggy and Diamond Dogs, so I forgot how solid that one was.

FWIW, Aladdin Sane and Station to Station are my two fave Bowies.

Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man is a great past-his-prime record. I'm Your Man, First We Take Manhattan, Take This Waltz, Tower of Song...the only bad song is the horrible Jazz Police.

I really enjoy the more recent Bowie albums, especially the last two. Also, this was already mentioned but McCartney's Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is really, really good.

 

 

 

 

 

Beck's Modern Guilt might be a good one for this thread, too. Sorry this is two posts, but the reply text editor wouldn't let me continue that last one for some reason.

Bowie's Heathen & Reality  was a damn good return to form after a string of fairly uninspired albums. Heathen's "Sunday", "5:15 The Angels Have Gone", & "I Would Be Your Slave" are standouts, as are Reality's killer opener "New Killer Star" & the raucous title track. There's some fat on both albums but trim that & together they're gold.

 

The problem with Bowie in the 90s (aside from an over reliance on the dull Reeves Gabrels) was that each album was rooted in a style that was always a couple years past it's experation date. 1993's Black Tie White Noise was all about New Jack Swing 2 years after it died; Outside, aside from the title track, the ballsy "Heart's Filthy Lesson", & the sparse "The Motel" the album was a mix of MOR Industrial & club kid baiting "geezer" techno.

 

His foray into drum n bass, 1997's Earthling, was a bold attempt at mixing heavy rock with electronica. "Dead Man Walking", "Seven Years In Tibet" , "Telling Lies", & "Looking For Satellites" are the strongest tracks on this mixed bag of hits & misses. When I saw him on this tour, I was struck by how uncool the whole enterprise Earthling seemed to be. It looked like Bowie was trying his damndest to fit a youth-y contemporary mold but simply couldn't pull it off. Funnily enough, 13 years later, it's Earthling that has aged the best out of his 90s output.

 

With "hours", Bowie slips quietly & comfortably into post-middle age malaise, arriving with a contract obligation filling album bereft of melody, energy, or interest. Save for the ambient piece "Brilliant Adventure", "New Angels Of Promise" & the stellar "What's Really Happening", itself a mini return to form,"hours" is an album so blase it challenges the listener's ability to recall any of it's tunes once it's over.

 

For anyone interested in "past his prime" Bowie, this is my time tested, never fails compilation tracklist of the Best Of Bowie 1984-1999:

 

01 Loving The Alien

02 Don't Look Down

03 Absolute Beginners

04 Never Let Me Down

05 As The World Falls Down

06 Tin Machine - Shopping For Girls

07 The Wedding Song

08 Tin Machine - You Belong In Rock N' Roll

09 Buddha Of Suburbia

10 Outside

11 The Motel

12 Thru' These Architects' Eyes

13 Looking For Satellites

14 Dead Man Walking

15 Seven Years In Tibet

16 Telling Lies

17 What's Really Happening

18 Brilliant Adventure

19 New Angels Of Promise

20 We Shall All Go To Town (b-side)

 

 

 

 

I don't know that there a single "return to form" album involved, but I was working for Van Morrison's record company in the 80's, when he ran out a string of complete snoozefests like A Sense of Wonder, No Guru No Method No Teacher and Hymns to the Silence. Granted, he's tended to grab the low-hanging fruit of jazz and r&b covers since then, but with what feels like a renewed sense of purpose: A Night in San Francisco's a real blast, and both Down the Road and Magic Time have some excellent new Morrison originals as a sort of bonus.

I'll get in on the Heathen love.  Another great collaboration with producer Tony Visconti, the first since Scary Monsters and The Berlin Trilogy (I consider this Bowie's prime).  And Slip Away may be my favorite Bowie ballad.  Outside has some enjoyable tracks, but as a whole it never really clicked for me.

 

Also, while I wouldn't call either of them a complete return to form, Pink Floyd's The Division Bell and Yes's Magnification really try to escape that cheesy 80s arena rock sound that both bands had been criticized for.  Neither was particularly successful in re-kindling the technical and compositional flare they had in their prime, but both albums are quite solid and a definite improvement from aural atrocities like Momentary Lapse of Reason and Big Generator.

Edited by fuzzy dunlop - 1/24/11 at 4:00pm

I'll probably get creamed for this, but some of those '80s hair metal bands have put out some really solid rocking albums in the 2000s.  Winger's IV and Karma albums, Europe's last three albums, and Ratt's latest album are really good...if you like that kind of music......

 

.......which I do.

 

Interesting. I'm an advocate for Outside but I get your point about it being possibly past it's prime. I do think though that Hallow Spaceboy off of that album sounds far more immediate and of it's time than anything Bowie's done since. That track just really grabs you by the scruff of the neck and really reminds me of the stuff Future Sound of London and Apollo 440 were doing. 

Definitely agree with a few picks in this thread -

 

Perry Farrel's Satellite Party album was a lot of fun, with plenty of spritely and spacey pop tunes.

 

David Bowie's Reality album has numerous fantastic moments, and one of my favorite closers ever in "Bring Me The Disco King." And that Pablo Picasso cover is marvelous.

 

As for Prince, tough to say whether he's truly past his prime. I really enjoyed his very recent works like Lotus Flow3r and 20ten, but the rest of his work this decade hasn't been terribly engaging.

Miasta, I won't give you crap for your love of that type of music. :) I am unfamiliar with the later work of these bands, but I have wondered from time to time what these guys would do when they were no longer on the main stage, no longer primped and polished and calculated by A&R departments for the top ten. Has their approach changed dramatically, or are they doing a retro thing?