Great Songs on Albums That Suck

Music: the good, the bad, and the ugly

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I wrote an article going over some albums that are otherwise fantastic, save for maybe one or two songs that kinda spoil the experience. There are several notable examples of this, such as “Escape” off of Metallica’s Ride the Lightning album. Another example raised was “Octopus's Garden” on Abbey Road by the Beatles.

Setting this aside, however, it got me thinking about some amazing songs that come from otherwise lacklustre albums, and this is a much more interesting discussion. When we talk about bad albums, we seldom focus on any of the good things and are quick to lump in the whole thing as bad a lot of the time, so the question of bad albums with one or two good songs can be a really cool way of looking at things.

Straight out of the gate, one great song from an album that otherwise sucks is “Under Pressure” by Queen from the album Hot Space. This might be a hot take from me, but I actually think that most Queen albums are bad, save for the standout singles, but I digress. Hot Space was a bit of an awkward album for Queen; they were trying to go in a bit of a different musical direction from previous work, and while I definitely respect that artistically, that doesn’t mean the work itself ended up being all that good.