Musicians have a very unusual relationship with the songs they write. Just like an actor doesn't sit around watching his or her own movies all day (hopefully), a musician doesn't listen to their own albums very often, for various reasons. They could simply be tired of hearing the songs, or maybe they're self-conscious, but sometimes an artist genuinely dislikes their own work. Here are seven albums aren't very well liked by the people who made them.
1. Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother (1970)
In the years between the departure of original songwriter Syd Barrett and the release of 1971's classic Meddle, Pink Floyd wandered aimlessly through various psychedelic experiments. The band's most successful album during this time was Atom Heart Mother, its first to go to number one in the UK, but if you asked the members of Pink Floyd, it's the band's worst album. Guitarist David Gilmour has described the album as "a load of rubbish."
2. Bad Religion - Into the Unknown (1983)
Younger fans of Bad Religion's unique style of melodic hardcore might be very surprised to discover that in 1983, the band released an album of highly uncharacteristic progressive rock called Into the Unknown. The album was so controversial that it's never been released on CD, with guitarist Brett Gurewitz describing the album as a "terrible misstep."
3. Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA (1984)
Born in the USA may be Bruce Springsteen's most successful album, as well as one of the top 20 best-selling albums of all time, but Springsteen doesn't see what all the fuss is about. He's described the songs on the album as being "a group of songs about which I've always had some ambivalence."
4. R.E.M. - Around the Sun (2004)
The albums released by R.E.M. after the departure of drummer Bill Berry have never been as highly regarded as the band's previous work, but none were as harshly received as 2004's Around the Sun, which has a Metacritic score of 56/100. The band members agreed with the music press, with guitarist Peter Buck saying the album "wasn't really listenable." The band's follow-up Accelerate was rightly hailed as a return to form.
5. Blur - The Great Escape (1995)
Though Blur won the Battle of Britpop when their single "Country House" went to number one, frontman Damon Albarn has expressed his distaste for the LP the song comes from, The Great Escape. In Albarn's opinion, he's released two bad albums in his career: Blur's "awful" debut, and The Great Escape, which he describes as "messy".
6. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
It may be the greatest album of all time, but not all of the Beatles are convinced of Sgt. Pepper's greatness. John Lennon described it as being a concept album that "doesn't go anywhere," but George Harrison was much more direct with his criticisms. In The Beatles Anthology documentary, Harrison admits that while he "had a few moments in there" that he enjoyed, on the whole he "didn't really like that album much."
7. Weezer - Pinkerton (1996)
When it was released in 1996, Rolling Stone named Weezer's Pinkerton as the third worst album of the year, which in 2001 led frontman Rivers Cuomo to describe it as a "hideous record...a hugely painful mistake." However, when the critical consensus of the album shifted years later to be overwhelmingly positive, Cuomo changed his mind, calling the album "great...brave, and authentic." It's a good thing Cuomo enjoyed the album enough to release it in the first place.
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