The Curse of Great Albums Ruined By One Song

Failing to reach perfection

5 min read

Just now

A discussion that I find really interesting whenever it comes up is albums that would be perfect if not for one or two songs that just let them down. Oftentimes, these are songs that aren’t necessarily bad; it’s just that they’re not on the level of the rest of the tracks on an album that are already stellar, and by comparison, they come off as a huge letdown.

Experiencing albums like this is something many people can no doubt relate to. You listen to an album and think about how fantastic everything is, and then you get to the one song that just spoils the experience. It can be pretty frustrating or at least anticlimactic.

I’m a metalhead, and it’s not exactly a secret that there are quite a few metal albums that fall into this category, with perhaps the most obvious candidate being Metallica’s Ride the Lightning. Everyone is familiar with songs such as “Creeping Death,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and the album’s title track. All of these are fantastic songs, but when we get to the song “Escape,” things aren’t exactly great, to be honest.

With “Escape,” I think I actually remember reading somewhere once that the song was just something they put together after all of the others in order to fill out the album more, after pressure from Metallica’s…