Overblown (but great) albums
 

Some albums are just so overdone that they end up good (I guess that's the reason why a lot of people got into Nevermind, but I'm not going to get into that). A few of my choices:


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XTC- White Music

The tempos are too fast, the vocals too urgent, the keyboards too shrill...everything's ridiculously overplayed. It sounds like they went into the studio, played everything as fast as they could, and then sped the master tape up a few notches. And it's great. Well, at least side 1 is.



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The Best Of The Shangri-Las

The songs are hopelessly melodramatic and the production is too extreme, too overpowering and perfect. Mary Weiss' (relatively) sedate vocals make it all work. If you can get past the chesse, there are plenty of great pop tracks here.



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Bruce Springsteen- Born To Run

Ok, so the songs have all been bettered live, when they're stripped of the "Wall Of Sound" that mars this record. It's still better than most albums I've heard.

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There's too damn much of it and at times sounds dated no matter how much sheen they tried to put on it. But it's still pretty darn good, it must be said.

Are you using the production as a factor or the pompous nature of the music?both?

Either or.

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The whole sube genre 'Pomp Rock' was created for this Midlands 5 piece. Rodney Matthews art. Huge keyboard led riffs. Lyrics straight out of a Tolkien novel.. and I love them. They have made some damn fine Rock classics in their time: 'The Spirit', 'Soldier Of The Line', 'How Far Jerusalem' and 'One Step Away'. I know it is supposed to be one album only-apologies!

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Even the cover is awful . The production has a distinctly 80's fairlight drum sound and there are far too many ideas going on; in what is the (apparently) simple world of Metal. Listen again. One of the most intelligent and multi layered Metal releases with Musical dexterity matched by cerebral content..even if Geoff Tate does have an annoying falsetto!

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A prog rock album hiding under the guise of a Britpop classic. Mansun mixed twisted time changes, Tom Baker narration and indeed a concept album 20 years past it's sell by date. Guess what? It is fucking ace and discharged it's musical superiority over many a 90's band.

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This album has the distinction of being called overblown... by Rick Wakeman. :laughing:

What a polarizing album if there ever was one. It's a love it or hate it kinda album and even the most diehard Yes fans are divided by it. I personally love it, people think theres not enough going on to warrant 20 minute long songs, but I disagree, I've always prefered Yes's longer songs and if any prog band can pull of a whole album of ridiculously long songs it's Yes, their songwriting was certainly getting better and more original.

The overblown factor here is that it's a double album with 4 tracks that all clock in around 20 minutes, I think it could have done without the rather wanky The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun), but the other tracks are near perfect and it's some of the best melodicism the band has ever done. I never understood the downright hate for this album, I think rock suites are a great concept, Pink Floyd did the same thing a year later on WWYH with Shine On You Crazy Diamond after all.

A lot of people say this album is overprodued, and maybe so, though I prefer to think of overproducing as trying to mask flaws in the musicianship, but Yes were never the kind of band that was trying to be "raw" or "real" or anything like that, they always tried to make albums that gave a completely different experience from everything else, and like it or not they certainly achieved that here. I love the rather bizzare sound they created here, the great amount of resonance that was the result of the band covering the studio with tiles to give it the acoustics of a bathroom and honestly I don't see the pretenses of this album being any more off the wall than Pet Sounds was in 1966.

Either way, this was the album that unfortunately gave prog it's long reputation of bloatedness and pretentiousness.

But I've always been drawn to the more theatrical and mystical side of rock music, so I don't mind a little pomposity, or a lot of it. Overblown? Hell yes. But for prog thats usually a very positive thing.

Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana....WAYYYYYYY overblown.:thumb: Good album, and very innovative, but highly Overblown.

Overblown. Not overrated.

No one is saying these albums are overrated.

I say it's both. Just like i did before. No one said that, you're correct, they asked what albums are overblown, I said Nirvana's, get over it. Many others are too, just that one came to mind first.

Actually, this is a thread about good albums. Hence the "great' desgination in the title.