You know, when I started this series, I never imagined I would make it this far. Not only for common sense reasons (listening to and writing about all these albums has to be bad for my health), but I was fairly convinced Albummer would end well before its 50th episode. I'm absolutely delighted to be wrong on the second point, because it's one of my favorite features on the internet. I hope the show keeps going past the point where opening my rankings in the Notes app completely crashes my phone. As with last time, I'm skipping blurbs (except one) on previously ranked albums. If you'd like to read more about them, here are the links to part one, part two, and part three.
1. Quake (soundtrack), Nine Inch Nails
As I’ve grown older, I’ve ventured further into electronic and ambient music. Maybe it’s because I work better when I’m listening to it, but a great influence on that direction has been the evolution of Nine Inch Nails. My favorite album from the group is the sprawling The Fragile, which also includes my favorite instrumental track of all time, “Just Like You Imagined”. This soundtrack was almost certainly crafted while The Fragile was still being recorded, so is it any wonder I loved listening to it? I could definitely see “Aftermath” closing out disc 1, or being a bonus track after “Ripe (with Decay)”. “The Hall of Souls” could be inserted into one of the Ghosts records and I wouldn’t even know it. Trent probably did himself a disservice to overcoming the edgelord image with titles like “It Is Raped” and “Damnation”, but the music itself is tense and compelling. I will admit that my attention flagged during the longest track, “Life”, but I was very productive while listening to it at work. Also, I’ve never played Quake, and I’m burying that fact about myself here so nobody notices my lack of Gamer Cred (™). Album good!
2. Metallica, Metallica
3. Jugulator, Judas Priest
4. Attila, Attila
5. Be A Man, "Macho Man" Randy Savage
6. Liz Phair, Liz Phair
All I remembered about this album were critics hating it and “H.W.C.”, so I was really curious to reassess it after the better part of two decades. My initial thought was “holy crap this is the most 2003 album of all time”, a conclusion that is supported by a cursory look at the songwriting staff. Songs like “Rock Me” and “Why Can’t I?” are extremely not my cup of tea, but Phair looks and sounds like she’s having a good time on them. It’s hard to resist criticizing the clearly-written-by-middle-aged-white-dudes lyrics on the singles, but knowing the little I know about Liz Phair, that feels like a trap a lot of critics fell into. It also sells short songs like “Little Digger”, which is a pretty unique story and perspective in pop music. So while the album is decidedly not “for me”, who gives a shit; it’s still pretty good.
7. Still Sucks, Limp Bizkit
8. Tony Hawk's American Wasteland (soundtrack), Various Artists
To further destroy my Gamer Cred (™), I have never been a fan of the Tony Hawk skateboarding games. Even worse, I’m not sure I’ve heard the original versions of at least half the songs on this soundtrack. I do however know I greatly disliked the cover of “Search and Destroy”. Beyond those particular nails on my personal chalkboard, I had a generally good time with the album. I know IGN gave it a really low rating for being a bunch of emo bands or some such nonsense, but it seemed like a collection of competent covers appropriate for a Tony Hawk game. It was also pretty funny seeing Dropkick Murphy’s deliver a straightforward cover without any of their typical quirkiness. Very clearly the best job the infamous Various Artists have done thus far in this series.
9. Songs of Innocence, U2
10. Shaq Diesel, Shaquille O'Neal
11. Greatest Hits, Chris Gaines
12. Music from Another Dimension!, Aerosmith
After a 68 minute listening experience, I’m still unclear why Aerosmith bothered to pick a theme for the album. I’m pretty sure they just enjoyed the aesthetic of old movie posters, and they got their design team to generate the title and cover art while they made the same music the band has made for decades. Based on the topics covered by the music itself, I personally think they should have named it “Lovely to Love Your Lovin’”. The best thing I can say about this album is that it’s virtually indistinguishable from everything else I’ve heard from Aerosmith from the 90’s. Unfortunately, this is also the worst thing I can say about the album. These old dudes had no way of knowing this a decade ago, but in 2022 we live in a constant churn of resurrected old content. Every single story seemingly needs to be adapted, and any side character from a 40 year old Star Wars movie can get a prestige drama about what a sad parent they truly were. All our presidential candidates are between the ages of 75 and dead. Musically, the album is fine, but I don’t have enough appreciation for Aerosmith’s work to say whether it compares favorably or unfavorably to the rest of their discography. I wish they’d thrown in some extremely ill-advised dubstep to capture the zeitgeist, though.
13. Mission Impossible 2 Soundtrack Album, Various Artists
The greatest voices of turn of the century butt rock (and also Tori Amos?) contribute to one of two soundtracks released in honor of the worst Mission Impossible film, and all I feel is indifference. I was definitely forced to listen to this album in the basements and cars of friends when it came out, yet I can’t recall a single track besides Metallica’s and Limp Bizkit's. The fact that this album charts as highly as it does on this ranking is mostly an appreciation that it’s not a bunch of ill-advised covers. It also becomes pretty clear that we’re actually getting these bands (who are not enjoyable to listen to, with a couple of exceptions) at something close to their best. So for every “Rocket Science” and “My Kind of Scene” on the album, there’s something else that’s listenable at minimum. I found my time with the album to fly by, which is sometimes the most I can ask for on albums covered by the show. One final note, though: if you can’t nail a cover of a well-known Pink Floyd track for a movie, please don’t even try. At least it wasn’t Velvet Revolver’s version of “Money”? Or better yet, get these guys to do it.
14. Deliver Us from Evil, Kryst the Conqueror
15. 44/876, Sting & Shaggy
16. Dead Man's Bones, Dead Man's Bones
I love a good celebrity vanity musical project, so seeing Baby Goose make a “gothic folk” album seemed like a promising prospect. This anticipation was heightened by reading the background for creating this album, which sounds like one of those “I went crazy playing a Batman villain” interviews from the stupidest actors on the planet. Imagine my surprise when the album was unremarkable in any direction. It sounds like a spooky predecessor to the stomp-clap epidemic of the post-Imagine Dragons world, such as the banal outro to an otherwise fun “In The Room Where You Sleep”. I can’t differentiate between the majority of tracks in hindsight because they all sound like they’re auditioning to be the intro music for a 2010 prestige TV show. There are child chorus portions, and they go roughly as well as you might expect. The biggest crime of this album is the long stretches of boredom that accompany listening to it, especially with the overlong “Buried in Water” and “Dead Hearts”. Overall, you would do well to avoid this album, just because you can probably use the 46ish minutes to do anything else and have a better time.
17. Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy, Leonard Nimoy
18. The Return of Bruno, Bruce Willis
19. Father of All Motherfuckers, Green Day
20. Anywhere I Lay My Head, Scarlett Johansson
I’m an enormous fan of Tom Waits’ music, to the point where he’s probably one of my top three favorite artists ever. If there’s one piece of advice I could give any aspiring artist who wants to cover one of his songs, it would be: don’t. Or rather, don’t if you can’t come up with any interesting spin on his music. ScarJo truly flubs that latter point, with every track being a straightforward and lesser version of Waits’ originals. The closest the album gets to justifying its own existence is with the David Bowie-assisted “Falling Down”, although there are quite a few problems with the track. There are some truly laughable synth noises throughout the album, contrasting heavily with the careful selection of instrumentation typical in Waits’ music. As a result, every song sounds like something played over the trailer for a new season of True Detective. Well, almost every song: the self-insert original “Song for Jo” sounds like it came from a completely different album. It’s the most coherent song on the entire collection, but unfortunately for ScarJo it’s still very boring to listen to. Under no circumstances can I recommend this collection of crawlers, lollers, and sad bastard covers, even if you don’t share my oversensitivity to poor renditions of these songs.
21. Loud Rocks, Various Artists
22. Sonic Adventure 2 OST, Various Artists
80 songs! You motherfuckers made me listen to 80 songs on a single soundtrack! I kept thinking I accidentally opened a playlist exclusively made of anime opener music, but no, it was still Sonic. Probably the worst part of this is that no song was a complete unlistenable shitshow. Even the Knuckles raps were semi-competent, although the sheer number of them was an act of violence. I was very amused by “Throw It All Away” being a poor knockoff of NIN’s “March of the Pigs”, as well as the “E.G.G.M.A.N.” theme trying its best Ozzy Osbourne. The soundtrack could have used a lot more of those, because the vast majority of songs bludgeoned me into a hazy stupor. I don’t know what possessed the freaks at SEGA to commission this behemoth, but it might stand up as one of the most ill-advised video game soundtracks of all time. The Chaos deserved better than this.
23. Cyberpunk, Billy Idol
24. Rebirth, Lil Wayne
25. Transplants, Transplants
Never before in my rankings have I disliked a competently made album this much. Maybe it’s just because I have no nostalgia or fondness for Rancid, Operation Ivy, or this kind of punk writ large. The robotic drumming of Travis Barker made me very sleepy as well. And while I have no issues with bizarre voices (see aforementioned Tom Waits fandom), something about Tim Armstrong’s vocals bothers the absolute shit out of me. If you do remember this album fondly, more power to you. For me, it was an unpleasant slog (48 minutes long! How?!?) that made me wish I was listening to nearly anything else.
26. Shine On, Jet
At the risk of further dating myself, my freshman year of college started in 2004. At least in western Pennsylvania, Jet’s “Cold Hard Bitch” and “Look What You’ve Done” were inescapable that fall. I thought it strange at the time that the band would slingshot between late 90’s hard rock misogyny and sad lad breakup songs, but I was also a very ignorant teenager. One of the common complaints with Oasis is that they sound like a Beatles record that got thrown in with the wash, and that the end result was a muddled facsimile of a better band. If that’s true, then Jet’s Shine On is a copy of Be Here Now that you forgot was mixed up with your laundry until you moved your clothes to the drier. There’s enough competent musicianship to avoid falling into Van Weezer territory, but songs like “Rip It Up” ensure that the full listening experience is outside the realm of tolerability. I ranked this album based on its music alone, but I want to say that the video for the title track reminded me a lot of Russell Brand’s character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I assure you is not a compliment because that movie came out a year earlier. Also, since I’ve spent way too much time thinking about Jet, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a great movie, and Bill Hader is especially good in it.
27. The Tears of Hercules, Rod Stewart
28. The Philosophy of the World, The Shaggs
29. Mainstream Sellout, Machine Gun Kelly
30. Van Weezer, Weezer
31. Playing with Fire, Kevin Federline
32. Bang! Pow! Boom!, Insane Clown Posse
33. Youth Authority, Good Charlotte
34. 1000hp, Godsmack
35. Freddy's Greatest Hits, The Elm Street Group
Ah good, I was worried we weren’t doing ploddingly unfunny concept albums that consist mostly of covers anymore. Listening to this album evoked the feeling of feeling sick at work: a dull ache that seemed to slow time down, and all I wanted to do was go to bed. My head swam with feverish possibilities, like if this was a band in search of a gimmick or a gimmick in search of a middling record to be applied to. Was this album solely invented to sell for Halloween parties, or to gift to the horror fan in your life (if that was even a thing yet)? I delved into my own nightmare landscape (YouTube comments) and found that a whole lot of people love this album. I’d rather listen to Freddy growl randomly over a song in progress than hear another Crazy Frog noise, but this was still a profoundly upsetting listening experience.
36. Speedin' Bullet 2 Heaven, Kid Cudi
37. Origins, Imagine Dragons
38. Taste of Christmas, Various Artists
39. Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just for You, Joe Pesci
40. Crazy Frog Presents More Crazy Hits, Crazy Frog
41. Kidz Bop 3, The Kidz Bop Singers
42. Too Legit for the Pit, Various Artists
43. Believers Never Die Volume Two, Fall Out Boy
44. WWE Originals, Various Artists
Maybe I mentioned this in a previous post, but I’ve been doing a weekly Trash Song Tuesday segment with friends and colleagues since the start of 2020. I did some extracurricular wrestling music listening earlier this year for content, so it’s with some certainty that I can declare this album to be one of the worst in that mini-genre. Making your very first track a 2+ minute skit is an extremely questionable choice; making it only the first of FIVE Stone Cold Steve Austin skits is simply a terrible one. I wish I knew more about the decisions leading into creating this album, because Wikipedia doesn’t have that information (but it does have two separate “Reception” categories, for some ungodly reason). It’s mostly unlistenable dreck, but surprisingly strong tracks from Lilian Garcia and Lita stand out, despite their “discount Evanescence” and “flat vocal” issues, respectively. Special shout-outs to two of the worst songs I’ve heard in this entire series, courtesy of Kurt Angle and Eddie / Chavo Guerrero. Hard to believe this album came out a year after the excellent Randy Savage rap album. Final request: do not, in fact, put a little ass on your baby.
45. Rock'n Roll Gangster, Fieldy's Dreams
46. LuLu, Metallica
47. Angelic 2 the Core, Corey Feldman
48. St. Anger, Metallica
49. Danzig Sings Elvis, Danzig
50. Around the World with the Chipmunks, Alvin and the Chipmunks
51. Funny Minions: TV and Movie Theme Remixes, Funny Minions Guys
As part of your regularly scheduled update on the Funny Minions Guys' discography, it appears that part 3 of their mainline series has been taken down from iTunes. Fret not, because they've added an additional four volumes of their "Top Hits" series to make up for that loss. Unfortunately, none have been released since July 11th of this year, meaning that we may have seen the last of your quarterly Funny Minions Guys reports. Let those dudes know if you want to hear a cover of the latest Santigold album, though; it's your support that keeps them going.
52. The Dumbest Asshole in Hip-Hop, Steve-O
This will probably sound at least a little surprising, but I’m in my 30’s and have really never watched an appreciable amount of Jackass. Steve-O, therefore, is a relatively unknown commodity to me. What I do know is that he made a bad comedy album that, to its credit, tells a coherent story. It’s unfortunately interspersed with things I will generously consider songs, most of which clock under the 2-minute mark. There’s an enormous amount of self-deprecation that becomes just about the album’s only theme after a certain point. Don’t get me wrong, I like self-deprecating art, but it only works for me in moderation. For the thankfully short 22 minutes this album lasted, I sat completely stone-faced as Steve-O told me how funny other people thought his songs were. Clinically, it’s an interesting artifact of a bottoming out in a celebrity’s life, and the only reason it’s interesting rather than tragic is because Steve-O is in a much better place now. But with all the other bottom-feeders on this list, I could at least see the point in their creation. The Funny Minions Guys wanted to profit off some idea they had before their local radio station’s wacky morning DJs beat them to the punch. The Chipmunks wanted to stretch their legs with various musical styles under the tried-and-true format. Steve-O pretty much admits to this being a meandering waste of time, which is at least insightful of him. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make it at all listenable.
There you have it: a new album reigns supreme as the worst thing covered by Albummer. Will it be topped by the time part 5 comes out? We can only hope.
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