Do great performers know they are releasing a bad album? (2024)

I still wonder how Styx-Brave New World was released

In some cases the artist is too drugged up to care and releases sub-par product.

Couple things about Neil Young.

-David Briggs(died mid 90's) and possibly Elliot Roberts were around him forever and could be honest with him. Listening was another matter.
-Shakey book talked about getting $2mil every time he handed in an album from 90s onward. That explains a bit and funded non-musical endeavors.
-Geffen didn't help his 80's period, but I also think his sons health issues were internalized by him and messed him up until late 80's.

Intentionally? Not unless it’s a “contractual obligation” Album, where they’re just going through the motions.

I’m sure many will check in with the SHMF Critics to read what their opinion is.

I thought the insane quote was credited to Anderson not Barre?

However I feel one should be sceptical about artists who are negative about an album *after* it has been badly received. Would be interested so know what Anderson thought before it was released.

Someone may have already covered this but up until the late 90s even moderately successful artists tended to have fat publishing deals. Would not be unusual to expect to pick up a low five figures advance just for having an album released by a major on which you have 70% of the songwriting.

Of course if the record stiffs you won't get your deal renewed but in the cd era you could expect each cd sale to knock 40p off your advance net of your publisher's share. Assuming you wrote everything.

In the era when half a million sales was not all that your £200k advance could be paid down in next to no time even if in most territories your record was commercially disappointing.

Lots of incentive to release something / anything even if it isn't Something / Anything!

The way you know it's not political is that if Van had released four hours of identical midtempo jump blues obsessively focused on how we should all wear our masks and get our vaccines, like some kind of hybrid of Daniel Johnson and C. Everett Koop, that would have sucked too.

CD singles did well enough at one point that some label would book an afternoon in a studio for the act to record ANYTHING if genuine album outtakes were not available. Big artists doing songs that sounded like 2 hours goofing off on a multitrack sometimes had an odd charm.

Traveling Wilburies started as a Cloud Nine b-side session with famous buddies that turned into new project.

It's a combo of things. Pressures to keep up the 'fame'. Demanding contracts that force productivity and creativity artificially. The demands of life. Too much drugs, or in the case of McCartney, I am convinced he was smoking a lot of weed back in the '70's that made everything sound better on the studio headphones than they did in real life for the rest of us. I think it's rare when anyone purposefully makes a ****ty album.

A lot of it seems to depend on the environment in which an album was made. Like others have said, if they were generally optimistic during its creation, they might be biased and believe that a “bad” album is better than it is. (And maybe it is! Cause it’s all subjective.)

On the other hand, if the recording experience is miserable, they’ll be more inclined to admit the album’s flaws. Peter Buck has infamously stated how he doesn’t find Around the Sun (which in my opinion is still a pretty good album, even if it’s R.E.M.’s weakest) “listenable” due to their frustration and boredom while making it. Stipe’s stated that while he loves its material, they admittedly screwed up somewhere in the recording process.

Have you heard What's It Gonna Take? 90% of that album was jump blues songs specifically about how COVID is a conspiracy perpetrated by Bill Gates and the IMF.

The final 3 songs were jump blues about how Van is losing his mind, and those are actually pretty good.

Van has a knighthood -- he's one of the wealthiest entertainers in the UK -- he IS the establishment.