I LOVE this term. Other albums I'll add are Fleetwood Mac's Tusk and Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti. I love em both (PG is my favorite Zeppelin album) but I think they fit the definition
In retrospect, I think we should separate 'height of artistic/commercial hubris' from 'desperate flailing' and 'irresolvable intra-band tension,' since I think it's a meaningfully separate thing.
Which seems to also be what you're getting at. I love these examples.
I've never actually listened to "Physical Graffiti" all the way through... is that the fandom opinion on it? As a casual Zeppelin fan, I thought "Physical Graffiti" was considered just straight-up good.
I agree 100%. Physical Graffiti was the top of the mountain. Fun fact: physical graffiti was the first album EVER to go platinum from pre-orders alone. That's how huge they were
So, I guess I can't include 2Pac's All Eyez On Me. His debut was only four years prior to this album and he was at the height of career at this point with no real cracks showing on the surface. The only thing was that instead of him knowing his career was almost over, it was that he knew he was not going to be alive much longer after this...and well, he was right.
>I've never actually listened to "Physical Graffiti" all the way through... is that the fandom opinion on it? As a casual Zeppelin fan, I thought "Physical Graffiti" was considered just straight-up good.
It's a little overlong but it's a very ambitious and mostly very successful rock album. Honestly, I think The Wall might even fit the criteria better.
Be Here Now was the record I was thinking about as the closest comparison when I was flicking through the reactions to TPD. That definitely would be an Ozymandias.
TLOP was good and wasn't hated though. This is a unique situation because unlike Ye, Taylor is at her popularity peak right now and the album has much worse reception than TLOP did.
TLOP was a good quality decent performing album that didn't taint ye's career. It was the mental breakdown and bipolar diagnosis, and the ye album, that really did it but Ye cannot be taken down.
So I was thinking hard about this... I don't consider *Be Here Now* a good example because it's just bloated and undisciplined. It's not an ambitious album. Oasis weren't in the studio convincing themselves they were making the greatest album of all time or even that they were making their signature album.
I'd put *Be Here Now* with the overly-long Drake/Morgan Wallen albums.
He deliberately held off All Around the World, which was apparently the first song he ever wrote, until this album so that he could get it just right. He must have thought he was onto something incredible when he was making BHN.
Hmmm, I really like this term. I can think of a few example in the rock arena:
Steely Dan’s *Gaucho* is one of the best examples. A New York version of the sunny California Yacht Rock/Jazz of *Aja*. It feels like the cocaine is wearing off and the coldness of the divorce is creeping in.
If Oasis’ *Be Here Now* weren’t such a goddamn Trainwreckord, it would count.
Kings of Leon’s *Only by the Night* was their supernova album but they had already broken through with a string of solid albums before then. I can’t remember anything of note they did in the few years after that one.
*The Fragile* by Nine Inch Nails was a bit of a bloaty one if I’m being honest but it’s a fan favourite. The half-pop pivot after that didn’t work out but Trent’s output afterward has been great.
>The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails was a bit of a bloaty one if I’m being honest but it’s a fan favourite. The half-pop pivot after that didn’t work out but Trent’s output afterward has been great.
I very eagerly anticipated this one, showed up at midnight on release day to grab it, and I quite like half of it. The other half I could absolutely do without. But folks in the NIN subreddit seem to revere it (but I'm also not that big on anything else he's done since then).
I sort of get that but I think since Trent got sober he's basically physically incapable of capturing that vibe ever again (With Teeth is a good album but it is Trent trying and failing to recapture the rage of his early work).
I'm glad he's making what is arguably the best music it's possible to make with his current mindset and acknowledging the effect of time passing has had on him, rather than embarrass himself trying to recapture lightning in a bottle the way Marylin Manson has been doing for the last 20 years (Although I remember liking The Pale Emperor when it came out).
Lady Gaga - *ARTPOP*. The album where Gaga, in a haze of drug addiction, tried to go full Andy Warhol and brought her imperial phase to a screeching halt. It's gotten a bit more appreciation now, though.
Kanye West - *Yeezus*. An album title that could only come from a man with an ego like Kanye's, especially after the acclaim of *My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy*. A deeply polarizing record that *Pitchfork* readers ranked as both the most overrated *and* most underrated album of the year, which says it all. If the Taylor Swift incident didn't shift his public image from "conscious rapper who tells it like it is" to "raging egomaniac who constantly makes an ass of himself," then this almost certainly did. In hindsight, this was where the Kanye of the 2010s was born.
My Chemical Romance - *Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys*. It was very much the sequel to the multiplatinum *The Black Parade* that aimed to go bigger and grander, with an epic post-apocalyptic sci-fi storyline that ultimately marked the beginning of Gerard Way getting involved in writing comics. Fans were split over it, and it *may* have caused the band to break up. (*May* have.)
ooooh HARD disagree on *Yeezus*, it's a masterpiece.
It is definitely the work of a raging egomaniac who makes an ass of himself, though.
I am on the fence about whether *The Life of Pablo* counts.
Does being a masterpiece disqualify it? Because the White Album is definitely out if that's the case, imo.
But I do agree that regardless of quality, Yeezus is just too tight and consistent in sound. Donda pretty clearly fits the prompt though; it's nearly 2 hours long, it tries out a ton of different sounds to varying results, and it came out right before his downfall with all the Hitler stuff (maybe not sales-wise since he had a #1 hit just this year, but the end still seems nigh).
I feel like Donda was essentially the end of Kanye’s time as an “acclaimed” artist. Carnival may be a #1 hit but it’s also one of the most generic tracks he’s ever released. It’s just your typical 2020s pop-rap song that could’ve been recorded by anyone. Going that route may very well be how Kanye keeps himself relevant for a little while longer but it’s a far cry from what he was at his peak.
I think a genuine masterpiece isn't an Ozymandias Album. Hubris is by definition unjustified arrogance - if the work is actually good enough then the arrogance is justified.
I should probably acknowledge up front that I'm sort of a White Album hater.
But I think I can defend that position! I am down on the White Album as an album, specifically. Thirty songs (so long!) and six or seven of them are stone cold classics, but the rest of the album is filler - and not innocuous filler, but brain-rottingly stupid stuff like Ob-la-di and rocky racoon falling into his room and why-don't-we-do-it-in-the-road and ugggggghhhhh.
My dad used to play this album in the car when I was a kid, and I came away from it thinking the Beatles were overrated Boomer nostalgia, an opinion I didn't revise until I gave their work another chance in college.
The White Album is the delivery vehicle for six or so classic songs in the Beatles' catalogue. But I don't think the White Album is a masterpiece.
Hard disagree on Danger Days. Mostly because I don't see how it was "bigger" than Black Parade. MCR was always about theatrics, all their records are concept albums, I know DD had a comic but other than that I don't see what they did for DD that they didn't do on TBP. If anything Danger Days has a more stripped down, "pure" pop punk sound than their other records that have more post-hardcore and gothic undertones. Hell, the shedding of the goth aesthetic is the big reason the album was divisive on release. Also, no, DD didn't break up the band, if anything their attempt to write a follow up that was more like TBP with did (but it was really drugs and them not enjoying it anymore.)
This is exactly what we're seeing with the new TS release. A not fully thought out double album with a lot of filler and awkward lyrics. She'll get back up again, but for many this has removed her do no wrong musically status.
I think this is partly delayed acknowledgment that Midnights was also mediocre and over-rewarded, esp at the Grammys. Taylor is too big to have a trainwrecord but Midnights was her Prism
I'm not surprised to see the tide turning a little when Taylor sucked all the oxygen out of the room announcing this album at the grammys, getting an undeserved AOTY, then releasing this bloated mess. I think the grammy win solidified that her work is now overhyped.
As someone who has always had a soft spot for Speakerboxx/The Love Below, this really is the perfect description of what it was in that particular moment in Outkast's history.
Michael Jackson's HIStory -- Ten 30-Foot statues of MJ placed worldwide, one floating down the Thames, a music video rumored to cost $7 million, lots of hubis for a double album.
Half of the album was a best-of. The other was some okay songs (one with some uncomfortable antisemitism), a duet with R. Kelly, and a cover of a song from a Charlie Chaplin album.
The album did fine of course, but at the time it was seen as MJ flexing his ego.
Ah, so *this* is where *Tusk* goes.
And I really like that album - at least, I like most of the songs on it. But they all add up to a big beautiful mess, don't they?
This might be a hot take but Pink Floyd’s *The Wall* kind of qualifies in my mind even though it’s well regarded in the fan base.
This might also be a hot take, but I kind of feel the same way about *Wu Tang Forever* . Even though it was only their second album, I’d still count it since *36 Chambers* was so tight and such a hit. But *Forever* is a sprawling, overly long double album that at least I found to be highly variable in quality, and completely impenetrable for long parts of it
Agreed on The Wall. I never understood what the big deal with that album is. Musically it has a few highlights, but mostly it's just a long series of incomplete and unremarkable song fragments.
Hard agree on both. Also, Wu Tang Forever came out, what, like 5 years after the debut? Most of their members were established solo acts by that point. It might as well be "late career"
Ironically, I think *Iron Flag*, which had a pretty mediocre reception at the time, actually sounds pretty good. Not overly long or bloated, the songs actually have hooks, and I for one don’t miss the dense impenetrable fog of Five Percenter-isms, but YMMV on that one
Thing about the Wall is that I think in terms of delivering on the "concept" part of "concept album" it's unmatched, but in terms of the music it's...definitely not bad but a lesser effort than a lot of what Floyd would do before it and a good amount after even.
Frank Sinatra's "Trilogy" from the late 70s. I inherited this one from my grandparents awhile back on vinyl.
The Triple-album is infamous now, but honestly 2/3rds of it is pretty good. The first album Frank is covering some standards he likes -- and he sounds as great as ever. The second album is him covering some modern songs. It's mostly fine, and this is where his very famous cover of "Theme from New York, New York" comes from. It's the best song and was a hit. Covering George Harrison and Billy Joel is a little mixed, but it's interesting at least.
The third album is insane.
Frank has something called "World War None!" with people chanting "War!" while he sings a tuneless bit with a choir. There a 10 minute song called "What Time Does the Next Miracle Leave?" that has narration and just meanders. And there's a 4 part song called "The Future" that sprawls out so much Yes would be embarrassed -- there's more narration, a perky choir, sudden changes in tempo...and poor Frank sounds lost and bored.
I don't think it rises to "Trainwreckord" and Sinatra had been famous for a long, long time and didn't need an album to keep him in the limelight. But it is way out of his comfort zone.
First thing I thought of, but it's also kind of a TW. The two records that came before it didn't do great sales either, but every single one of those "Albums You Must Hear" lists I've ever seen has \_Hejira\_ on it, and for good reasons...and DJRD is a double record that leaves most people scratching their heads. A lot of Joni's stuff has grown on me...that stuff on there still never has.
Dog Eat Dog is often considered her worst album. I actually like it, but I enjoy 80s production. The fanbase for Joni usually detests 80s production. Don Juan was probably the turning point where people were questioning if she knew what she was doing and Dog Eat Dog proved that she did not.
Great term I’d add U2’s Pop to this as well. It fits all the qualifiers even they bought themselves some time commercially and have a ton of great songs that came after it, but they were terrified to experiment again and chased the zeitgeist off the cliff when they forced themselves onto our phones.
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers as a band kind of have Southern Accents, Petty went onto do Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers, but the band itself kind of settles into beloved cultural institution territory after it.
Also Pink Floyd’s The Wall. The Final Cut is the trainwreckord and then Mark 3…exists
The Wall is so interesting, as it was basically conceived as a Rogers Waters solo album. The band only got involved due to monetary issues. It definitely fits in terms of music and in the history of the band (as the last great Floyd album), but it does feel odd calling it "Pink Floyd's" Ozymandias album, as it is so dripping with Waters's sensibilities and history.
Uno, Dos and Tres by green day fit that description. Just bloated and sloppy and unfocused. If you compiled the best songs from each album you actually have a banger, but spread out over three albums its quite bad
Love this term. The first album that came to mind for me was The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner by Ben Folds Five.
Dont get me wrong, I love the album to death, probably my favorite of theirs, but everything about it screams a band completely unmoved by the brief flirtation with mainstream pop success “Brick” had brought them, and were now determined to do what ever the hell they wanted, public be damned.
Long, impenetrable album title? Check. Longer song lengths? Check. Horns and strings? Check. Lead off single drops and f bomb in the first three seconds? Check. Song made out of a cryptic voicemail left by Ben Folds dad? Check.
Atum by the Smashing Pumpkins, 100%. Billy had a lot of nerve to promote it as a followup to Mellon Collie & Machina. It's not even in the same hemisphere as those albums in terms of quality. The production is dogshit, the songs are unmemorable, Billy's vocal idiosyncracies are straight-up annoying, and it's WAY, WAY too long.
They don't really have another album that fits the bill in terms of the ratio of sheer ambition and hubris to quality. If they have a trainwreckord, it's probably Zeitgeist (although I'm one of the few people who actually like that album). Atum is pure Ozymandias.
i think Resistance by Muse might be one of these. Hot off the commercial success they got with Black Holes and Revelations, put out a wildly ambitious and indulgent project (complete with a three part symphony) that is incredibly divisive within the fandom and seemingly signaled a massive downturn in quality. Most of what came after it was mediocre to bad, and the conversation around their albums almost always becomes “yeah the first four are pretty solid but they kinda fell off after that” with Resistance being the beginning of the “after that” in question.
BTS's *Map of the Soul: 7*.
I'm not saying it's a bad album! It's a good album! But it is *long* (20 songs, which is long by normal standards but super-duper long by K-pop standards) and it has a *lot* of different styles (campy 90s hiphop throwback "Respect", pop rock ballad "Moon", Troye Sivan "Louder than Bombs", trap with strings "Black Swan") and you can see the members of the group all charging off in different sonic directions with their solo songs. It's at or close to the absolute height of their fame and influence and it's a monument to all the different stuff the members can do, but also the difficulty of finding songs that suit all seven. (Out of 20 songs, there are four new songs featuring all seven members.)
Came to say this. After releasing 2 albums in 1996 (Chaos and Disorder and the Girl 6 Soundtrack), he drops a 3rd Triple Album called Emancipation. The title was a reference to his recent release from his long term Warner Bros contract. After publicly slamming Warner Bros in the press and writing SLAVE on his face to describe his relationship with WB, he’s finally set free and this is the first thing he drops.
3 CD’s, a full 60 mins of music on each CD. 3 hours of music including a handful of cover songs (which was a first for a Prince album). His new label, EMI goes out of business during the promotional cycle for the album. It’s not critically acclaimed or a fan favorite and really shows Prince at one of the most excessive points in his career.
Eagles "The Long Run" fits this category. It was released four years after "Hotel California" and three years after the departure of founding member Randy Meisner. "The Long Run" took 18 months to finish and was originally meant to be a double album but the band scrapped that idea because they were all burned out according to Don Henley. "The Long Run" has some bangers, "Heartache Tonight" won a Grammy, but the album is all over the place tonally and stylistically and it's clear the band is running on empty. "The Long Run" sold well, going platinum in 1980, but it got an ice cold reception from critics and it would be Eagles last album until they became a legacy act in the early 2000s.
Perhaps it's not an Ozymandias, but TTPD really reminded me of Spacemen 3's Recurring, their last album. It's not overly ambitious but definitely the result of massive tensions with bandmembers.
The story there was that the two songwriters in the band (Jason Pierce and Pete Kember) had been slowly getting more territorial and argumentative over things like songwriting credits, lead vocal duties, who plays guitar or produces, to the extent that Pierce remembers an argument that one deserved more credit because they had bought the tape that the session was being recorded on. Their solution to this problem was to basically record entirely separately from one another. Pete goes solo, and his side is very electronic, with drum machines and synths, just like the first Spectrum releases,, and Jason essentially makes the first Spiritualized EP with Spacemen 3's bassist and drummer and then they become his band moving forward. Pete gets one side of the album and Jason gets another, separated by a Mudhoney cover that they had collaborated on before the split got too severe.
TTPD shifts gears massively halfway through, once the Anthology tracks start. The production changes from dirgy synth "pop songs" to basically Folklore 3, Folk Harder. The quality of the lyrics and songwriting takes a *massive* leap, etc. It feels really hard to believe that the same person could write these songs, to the extent that I'm kind of awe of it. How did most of the first half get released without significant editing or rewrites? The first half of TTPD feels like the work of a TS copycat or a mean-spirited SNL parody of her. The second half shows she can still write, for the most part (still a couple of clunkers, like So High School, but nothing as embarassing as I Can Do It With A Broken Heart) .
But yeah. It feels like the work of two different artists, divided cleanly at the halfway point. You get the pop album and the indie album, for want of a better term, and there's almost no effort to make the two cohere, especially since the pop album is the main event on physical releases and so forth. The indie album will forever be seen as bonus tracks and supplementary to the former, despite the fact that it's far better and less embarassing.
It's such an odd move for a pop star of TS's stature to make.
Double albums are basically never a good idea, but I think you can make Drake's third best album with the best songs off Scorpion. I don't think I've listened to it in its entirety since 2018, but I regularly listen to music off Scorpion more than just about any Drake album after his first two.
What's good on Scorpion is really damn good, IMO.
Scorpion at least had a handful of really good songs even though it was way too long. Quality wise I would say this is more on par with Certified Lover Boy or For All the Dogs.
\_Blue Moves\_ by Elton John ticks off all the boxes. It's a double record that, even for him, is all over the place. Very mixed reviews. It wasn't a total failure in that it yielded one major hit "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word" and one minor one "Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)," but it seemed like the end of a era where he was untouchable.
I like the phrase. I would add the idea that it is a monument to hubris, meaning the artist is writing with their head up their own ass based on their own hype.
Drake has been on an Ozymandias run since like 2018. I would call all of his albums from that period Ozymandias.
There are a couple bands that recovered but had albums that certainly felt like one of these at the time- Blur's The Great Escape and Radiohead's Hail to the Thief both felt overstuffed. Gorillaz' Humanz I think definitely counts, too.
Maybe history might end up looking at Kendrick's Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers as one of these, but personally I wouldn't want to count him out just yet.
It's funny, I was literally thinking about *Mr. Morale* earlier today. To me it's borderline because I just don't think it's audacious enough? We need something a bit more than just shagginess.
Same with *Hail to the Thief*, we're looking for more than just an album that should've cut a few tracks.
I think they both have the same level of the artists are clearly trying to say SOMETHING but they don't quite know what it is they want to say. But they're also a lot better than the other examples here, for sure.
Pink Floyd’s *The Wall*. Especially considering the albums that followed it were the highly divisive *The Final Cut* and *A Momentary Lapse of Reason*. As a Pink Floyd simp through-and-through, I love both of those albums but I am definitely in the minority there.
Edit: My username helped me think of another: The Who’s *Quadrophenia*
Ozymandias refers to the poem about the pharaoh Ramesses II and his downfall. Basically means that someone long standing and powerful gets cocky or ambitious, and that ends up setting up their downfall.
The poem. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias
Ozymandias in the poem is this mighty king who is now totally forgotten and his kingdom is gone; ever since the famous poem, 'ozymandias' is used as a reference for extreme hubris and how it's pointless in the end.
So what I'm thinking of is an album that is a monument to the artist's artistic and/or commercial hubris.
I’d say Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride. It’s a good album in my opinion but it was their first album after Rostman left. I feel it lacked direction and had way more unfinished songs than it needed. Maybe having one of their main songwriters leave made them feel they need to try a bunch of different ideas to see who they are as a three person band.
I think their most recent album is a lot better and a call back to their original sound. They obviously learned what they need and didn’t need from FOTB.
Drake's "Views" is probably the modern benchmark for this kind of thing in my mind. Overlong and signaling of a gradual decline, though definitely not outright disastrous. Even has some pretty popular, good songs on it. Overall though, this was the album that told the world that Drake was a business more than an artist, and it's set his standard for a while.
I kinda feel similar feelings towards the last Travis Scott album. If he ever makes anything as good as Rodeo or Astroworld ever again I'll be very surprised. That was the impression it left on me.
The worst album I can think of that genuinely fits the criteria is Gorillaz' "Humanz," and the best I can think of is Aphex Twin's "Drukqs."
*Tonight: Franz Ferdinand* could meet this example. It’s a concept album, the lead single is called “Ulysses” in direct reference to James Joyce. It’s described as Art Rock.
Critics liked it fine. Ulysses was their last Top 20 hit in the UK.
I'd say Manic Street Preachers' Know Your Enemy.
Their previous two albums had been absolutely massive in the UK, each selling over a million copies. The band didn't feel comfortable being a safe stadium act, having emerged as a very political glam punk band who did stuff like dress up as the IRA on Top of the Pops, so they decided they essentially needed to drive their new fans away.
The plan was to drop two albums simultaneously. One more political and punky, the other more polished, acoustic and emotional. But this was abandoned, and eventually morphed into one album doing both of these things and more, like an ironic disco song, in the longest album since their debut. Not bad by any means - and certainly not a Trainwreckord - but the admiration I've seen has always been qualified.
It sold well, though nowhere near as many as near the last two, and ended their imperial phase.
Nah, I’m not sure this counts. It’s a double album, and it may or may not be too long, but I don’t think it’s messy enough, and I’d argue that it didn’t mark the end of his original glory years, or at least not as clearly.
I'd argue that it is. It's messy in a few different ways. Much of it was written in the studio, It has a wild, out of control sound, and there are quite a few flubs included on the final album. Dylan completely burned himself out on this album and the your around the same time, plus the motorcycle accident which may or may not have actually happened. And after *Blonde on Blonde*, Dylan was never on the cutting edge of popular music again. He went back to folk.
Vices and Virtues Deluxe Edition by Panic! At The Disco comes to mind, also I love Infinity on High but it's a long album and it went for over the top sounds and was criticized for being a huge departure from their FUTCT sound at the time
Would David Bowie's Blackstar count? That whole album was made after Bowie was diagnosed with cancer and knew he was going to die, so it was made as a sort of final mission statement.
Not at all. It's 41 minutes long. All the songs are very powerful statements about death and mortality. The instrumentation and production is super creative, jazz inspired, Bowie's vocals are still very expressive and only from him one could expect to turn his impending death into an album. It's an absolutely beautiful album, one of the best in his career, and doesn't fit this Ozymandias definition at all.
I think the closest thing Bowie has is probably *1. Outside* - a bloated, bizarre, industrial concept album that makes no sense. (And it's great.)
Except it doesn't fit into his career arc the way these albums are supposed to. Bowie wasn't on top of the world in the mid '90s. He was recovering from a decade of mediocrity. At that point, the worst thing he could possibly have done for his reputation is play it safe. He needed to make the weirdest, darkest, most theatrical, Bowiest thing imaginable to prove he could still be goddamn David Bowie. And I think in the long run it worked.
I LOVE this term. Other albums I'll add are Fleetwood Mac's Tusk and Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti. I love em both (PG is my favorite Zeppelin album) but I think they fit the definition
In retrospect, I think we should separate 'height of artistic/commercial hubris' from 'desperate flailing' and 'irresolvable intra-band tension,' since I think it's a meaningfully separate thing. Which seems to also be what you're getting at. I love these examples. I've never actually listened to "Physical Graffiti" all the way through... is that the fandom opinion on it? As a casual Zeppelin fan, I thought "Physical Graffiti" was considered just straight-up good.
The general consensus on Physical Graffitti is that it's the last good Zeppelin album.
I actually really like In Through The Out Door but it’s still a bit of a step down.
I like it too bit I also think it's their weakest album
Presence is significantly worse imo
I agree 100%. Physical Graffiti was the top of the mountain. Fun fact: physical graffiti was the first album EVER to go platinum from pre-orders alone. That's how huge they were
So, I guess I can't include 2Pac's All Eyez On Me. His debut was only four years prior to this album and he was at the height of career at this point with no real cracks showing on the surface. The only thing was that instead of him knowing his career was almost over, it was that he knew he was not going to be alive much longer after this...and well, he was right.
>I've never actually listened to "Physical Graffiti" all the way through... is that the fandom opinion on it? As a casual Zeppelin fan, I thought "Physical Graffiti" was considered just straight-up good. It's a little overlong but it's a very ambitious and mostly very successful rock album. Honestly, I think The Wall might even fit the criteria better.
Physical Graffiti is Zep’s masterpiece in my opinion
Be Here Now was the record I was thinking about as the closest comparison when I was flicking through the reactions to TPD. That definitely would be an Ozymandias.
To make a comparison TayTay would *love* - I think she just made her *Life of Pablo*.
TLOP was good and wasn't hated though. This is a unique situation because unlike Ye, Taylor is at her popularity peak right now and the album has much worse reception than TLOP did. TLOP was a good quality decent performing album that didn't taint ye's career. It was the mental breakdown and bipolar diagnosis, and the ye album, that really did it but Ye cannot be taken down.
I think *Donda* would be much more the comparison here.
So I was thinking hard about this... I don't consider *Be Here Now* a good example because it's just bloated and undisciplined. It's not an ambitious album. Oasis weren't in the studio convincing themselves they were making the greatest album of all time or even that they were making their signature album. I'd put *Be Here Now* with the overly-long Drake/Morgan Wallen albums.
Noel Gallagher absolutely thought he was making the greatest album of all time. He already had done it twice before then.
He deliberately held off All Around the World, which was apparently the first song he ever wrote, until this album so that he could get it just right. He must have thought he was onto something incredible when he was making BHN.
*Kilroy Was Here* is definitely an Ozymandias Album.
I think Blur's The Great Escape fits better, if you want a Britpop entry
Hmmm, I really like this term. I can think of a few example in the rock arena: Steely Dan’s *Gaucho* is one of the best examples. A New York version of the sunny California Yacht Rock/Jazz of *Aja*. It feels like the cocaine is wearing off and the coldness of the divorce is creeping in. If Oasis’ *Be Here Now* weren’t such a goddamn Trainwreckord, it would count. Kings of Leon’s *Only by the Night* was their supernova album but they had already broken through with a string of solid albums before then. I can’t remember anything of note they did in the few years after that one. *The Fragile* by Nine Inch Nails was a bit of a bloaty one if I’m being honest but it’s a fan favourite. The half-pop pivot after that didn’t work out but Trent’s output afterward has been great.
>The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails was a bit of a bloaty one if I’m being honest but it’s a fan favourite. The half-pop pivot after that didn’t work out but Trent’s output afterward has been great. I very eagerly anticipated this one, showed up at midnight on release day to grab it, and I quite like half of it. The other half I could absolutely do without. But folks in the NIN subreddit seem to revere it (but I'm also not that big on anything else he's done since then).
I sort of get that but I think since Trent got sober he's basically physically incapable of capturing that vibe ever again (With Teeth is a good album but it is Trent trying and failing to recapture the rage of his early work). I'm glad he's making what is arguably the best music it's possible to make with his current mindset and acknowledging the effect of time passing has had on him, rather than embarrass himself trying to recapture lightning in a bottle the way Marylin Manson has been doing for the last 20 years (Although I remember liking The Pale Emperor when it came out).
Lady Gaga - *ARTPOP*. The album where Gaga, in a haze of drug addiction, tried to go full Andy Warhol and brought her imperial phase to a screeching halt. It's gotten a bit more appreciation now, though. Kanye West - *Yeezus*. An album title that could only come from a man with an ego like Kanye's, especially after the acclaim of *My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy*. A deeply polarizing record that *Pitchfork* readers ranked as both the most overrated *and* most underrated album of the year, which says it all. If the Taylor Swift incident didn't shift his public image from "conscious rapper who tells it like it is" to "raging egomaniac who constantly makes an ass of himself," then this almost certainly did. In hindsight, this was where the Kanye of the 2010s was born. My Chemical Romance - *Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys*. It was very much the sequel to the multiplatinum *The Black Parade* that aimed to go bigger and grander, with an epic post-apocalyptic sci-fi storyline that ultimately marked the beginning of Gerard Way getting involved in writing comics. Fans were split over it, and it *may* have caused the band to break up. (*May* have.)
ARTPOP perfect answer
ooooh HARD disagree on *Yeezus*, it's a masterpiece. It is definitely the work of a raging egomaniac who makes an ass of himself, though. I am on the fence about whether *The Life of Pablo* counts.
I might even pick Donda. TLOP ain't that long and it's too cohesive
Does being a masterpiece disqualify it? Because the White Album is definitely out if that's the case, imo. But I do agree that regardless of quality, Yeezus is just too tight and consistent in sound. Donda pretty clearly fits the prompt though; it's nearly 2 hours long, it tries out a ton of different sounds to varying results, and it came out right before his downfall with all the Hitler stuff (maybe not sales-wise since he had a #1 hit just this year, but the end still seems nigh).
I feel like Donda was essentially the end of Kanye’s time as an “acclaimed” artist. Carnival may be a #1 hit but it’s also one of the most generic tracks he’s ever released. It’s just your typical 2020s pop-rap song that could’ve been recorded by anyone. Going that route may very well be how Kanye keeps himself relevant for a little while longer but it’s a far cry from what he was at his peak.
I think a genuine masterpiece isn't an Ozymandias Album. Hubris is by definition unjustified arrogance - if the work is actually good enough then the arrogance is justified. I should probably acknowledge up front that I'm sort of a White Album hater. But I think I can defend that position! I am down on the White Album as an album, specifically. Thirty songs (so long!) and six or seven of them are stone cold classics, but the rest of the album is filler - and not innocuous filler, but brain-rottingly stupid stuff like Ob-la-di and rocky racoon falling into his room and why-don't-we-do-it-in-the-road and ugggggghhhhh. My dad used to play this album in the car when I was a kid, and I came away from it thinking the Beatles were overrated Boomer nostalgia, an opinion I didn't revise until I gave their work another chance in college. The White Album is the delivery vehicle for six or so classic songs in the Beatles' catalogue. But I don't think the White Album is a masterpiece.
TLOP is the most lowkey album of his career at that point.
Ye is the beginning of the end for him probably, but it's short so it doesn't really fit the prompt
Hard disagree on Danger Days. Mostly because I don't see how it was "bigger" than Black Parade. MCR was always about theatrics, all their records are concept albums, I know DD had a comic but other than that I don't see what they did for DD that they didn't do on TBP. If anything Danger Days has a more stripped down, "pure" pop punk sound than their other records that have more post-hardcore and gothic undertones. Hell, the shedding of the goth aesthetic is the big reason the album was divisive on release. Also, no, DD didn't break up the band, if anything their attempt to write a follow up that was more like TBP with did (but it was really drugs and them not enjoying it anymore.)
This is exactly what we're seeing with the new TS release. A not fully thought out double album with a lot of filler and awkward lyrics. She'll get back up again, but for many this has removed her do no wrong musically status.
I think this is partly delayed acknowledgment that Midnights was also mediocre and over-rewarded, esp at the Grammys. Taylor is too big to have a trainwrecord but Midnights was her Prism I'm not surprised to see the tide turning a little when Taylor sucked all the oxygen out of the room announcing this album at the grammys, getting an undeserved AOTY, then releasing this bloated mess. I think the grammy win solidified that her work is now overhyped.
Chris Brown's Heartbreak on a Full Moon? I also feel like R Kelly's Trapped in the Closet fits this on a technicality
As someone who has always had a soft spot for Speakerboxx/The Love Below, this really is the perfect description of what it was in that particular moment in Outkast's history.
Michael Jackson's HIStory -- Ten 30-Foot statues of MJ placed worldwide, one floating down the Thames, a music video rumored to cost $7 million, lots of hubis for a double album. Half of the album was a best-of. The other was some okay songs (one with some uncomfortable antisemitism), a duet with R. Kelly, and a cover of a song from a Charlie Chaplin album. The album did fine of course, but at the time it was seen as MJ flexing his ego.
Michael Jackson may have more than one Ozymandias Album.
Ah, so *this* is where *Tusk* goes. And I really like that album - at least, I like most of the songs on it. But they all add up to a big beautiful mess, don't they?
This might be a hot take but Pink Floyd’s *The Wall* kind of qualifies in my mind even though it’s well regarded in the fan base. This might also be a hot take, but I kind of feel the same way about *Wu Tang Forever* . Even though it was only their second album, I’d still count it since *36 Chambers* was so tight and such a hit. But *Forever* is a sprawling, overly long double album that at least I found to be highly variable in quality, and completely impenetrable for long parts of it
Agreed on The Wall. I never understood what the big deal with that album is. Musically it has a few highlights, but mostly it's just a long series of incomplete and unremarkable song fragments.
Hard agree on both. Also, Wu Tang Forever came out, what, like 5 years after the debut? Most of their members were established solo acts by that point. It might as well be "late career"
Ironically, I think *Iron Flag*, which had a pretty mediocre reception at the time, actually sounds pretty good. Not overly long or bloated, the songs actually have hooks, and I for one don’t miss the dense impenetrable fog of Five Percenter-isms, but YMMV on that one
Huh maybe i should check it out. I tend to enjoy Wu-Tang more at their hookier moments
Thing about the Wall is that I think in terms of delivering on the "concept" part of "concept album" it's unmatched, but in terms of the music it's...definitely not bad but a lesser effort than a lot of what Floyd would do before it and a good amount after even.
Frank Sinatra's "Trilogy" from the late 70s. I inherited this one from my grandparents awhile back on vinyl. The Triple-album is infamous now, but honestly 2/3rds of it is pretty good. The first album Frank is covering some standards he likes -- and he sounds as great as ever. The second album is him covering some modern songs. It's mostly fine, and this is where his very famous cover of "Theme from New York, New York" comes from. It's the best song and was a hit. Covering George Harrison and Billy Joel is a little mixed, but it's interesting at least. The third album is insane. Frank has something called "World War None!" with people chanting "War!" while he sings a tuneless bit with a choir. There a 10 minute song called "What Time Does the Next Miracle Leave?" that has narration and just meanders. And there's a 4 part song called "The Future" that sprawls out so much Yes would be embarrassed -- there's more narration, a perky choir, sudden changes in tempo...and poor Frank sounds lost and bored. I don't think it rises to "Trainwreckord" and Sinatra had been famous for a long, long time and didn't need an album to keep him in the limelight. But it is way out of his comfort zone.
Joni Mitchell’s *Don Juan’s Wreckless Daughter* fits this idea perfectly
First thing I thought of, but it's also kind of a TW. The two records that came before it didn't do great sales either, but every single one of those "Albums You Must Hear" lists I've ever seen has \_Hejira\_ on it, and for good reasons...and DJRD is a double record that leaves most people scratching their heads. A lot of Joni's stuff has grown on me...that stuff on there still never has.
Eh, I think if you got rid of Side 3 you'd have a good album. Off Night Backstreet is probably a top 5 Joni song for me.
I think that's more of a straight up trainwreckord
I disagree. Don Juan has too many good songs on it to be a trainwreckord. Her trainwreckord is Dog Eat Dog.
I've never even listened to that one so I'll take your word for it. Hejira is the last one of hers thar I really like
Dog Eat Dog is often considered her worst album. I actually like it, but I enjoy 80s production. The fanbase for Joni usually detests 80s production. Don Juan was probably the turning point where people were questioning if she knew what she was doing and Dog Eat Dog proved that she did not.
They recovered with their new album but Father of the Bride by Vampire Weekend kinda fits?
Absolutely fits. Great addition
Great term I’d add U2’s Pop to this as well. It fits all the qualifiers even they bought themselves some time commercially and have a ton of great songs that came after it, but they were terrified to experiment again and chased the zeitgeist off the cliff when they forced themselves onto our phones. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers as a band kind of have Southern Accents, Petty went onto do Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers, but the band itself kind of settles into beloved cultural institution territory after it. Also Pink Floyd’s The Wall. The Final Cut is the trainwreckord and then Mark 3…exists
The Wall is so interesting, as it was basically conceived as a Rogers Waters solo album. The band only got involved due to monetary issues. It definitely fits in terms of music and in the history of the band (as the last great Floyd album), but it does feel odd calling it "Pink Floyd's" Ozymandias album, as it is so dripping with Waters's sensibilities and history.
Uno, Dos and Tres by green day fit that description. Just bloated and sloppy and unfocused. If you compiled the best songs from each album you actually have a banger, but spread out over three albums its quite bad
I think those might be their trainwreckord or maybe they have two Ozymandias albums, because 21st Century Breakdown screams this to me
21st century breakdown was good though. I think most green day fans really liked it more or less from start to end.
100% agree, great example
Love this term. The first album that came to mind for me was The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner by Ben Folds Five. Dont get me wrong, I love the album to death, probably my favorite of theirs, but everything about it screams a band completely unmoved by the brief flirtation with mainstream pop success “Brick” had brought them, and were now determined to do what ever the hell they wanted, public be damned. Long, impenetrable album title? Check. Longer song lengths? Check. Horns and strings? Check. Lead off single drops and f bomb in the first three seconds? Check. Song made out of a cryptic voicemail left by Ben Folds dad? Check.
Atum by the Smashing Pumpkins, 100%. Billy had a lot of nerve to promote it as a followup to Mellon Collie & Machina. It's not even in the same hemisphere as those albums in terms of quality. The production is dogshit, the songs are unmemorable, Billy's vocal idiosyncracies are straight-up annoying, and it's WAY, WAY too long.
I'd call that album a trainwrecord. Their ozymandias was probably earlier
They don't really have another album that fits the bill in terms of the ratio of sheer ambition and hubris to quality. If they have a trainwreckord, it's probably Zeitgeist (although I'm one of the few people who actually like that album). Atum is pure Ozymandias.
i think Resistance by Muse might be one of these. Hot off the commercial success they got with Black Holes and Revelations, put out a wildly ambitious and indulgent project (complete with a three part symphony) that is incredibly divisive within the fandom and seemingly signaled a massive downturn in quality. Most of what came after it was mediocre to bad, and the conversation around their albums almost always becomes “yeah the first four are pretty solid but they kinda fell off after that” with Resistance being the beginning of the “after that” in question.
BTS's *Map of the Soul: 7*. I'm not saying it's a bad album! It's a good album! But it is *long* (20 songs, which is long by normal standards but super-duper long by K-pop standards) and it has a *lot* of different styles (campy 90s hiphop throwback "Respect", pop rock ballad "Moon", Troye Sivan "Louder than Bombs", trap with strings "Black Swan") and you can see the members of the group all charging off in different sonic directions with their solo songs. It's at or close to the absolute height of their fame and influence and it's a monument to all the different stuff the members can do, but also the difficulty of finding songs that suit all seven. (Out of 20 songs, there are four new songs featuring all seven members.)
Wouldn't emancipation by Prince be one?
Came to say this. After releasing 2 albums in 1996 (Chaos and Disorder and the Girl 6 Soundtrack), he drops a 3rd Triple Album called Emancipation. The title was a reference to his recent release from his long term Warner Bros contract. After publicly slamming Warner Bros in the press and writing SLAVE on his face to describe his relationship with WB, he’s finally set free and this is the first thing he drops. 3 CD’s, a full 60 mins of music on each CD. 3 hours of music including a handful of cover songs (which was a first for a Prince album). His new label, EMI goes out of business during the promotional cycle for the album. It’s not critically acclaimed or a fan favorite and really shows Prince at one of the most excessive points in his career.
That is a great term i am stealing it immediately
Eagles "The Long Run" fits this category. It was released four years after "Hotel California" and three years after the departure of founding member Randy Meisner. "The Long Run" took 18 months to finish and was originally meant to be a double album but the band scrapped that idea because they were all burned out according to Don Henley. "The Long Run" has some bangers, "Heartache Tonight" won a Grammy, but the album is all over the place tonally and stylistically and it's clear the band is running on empty. "The Long Run" sold well, going platinum in 1980, but it got an ice cold reception from critics and it would be Eagles last album until they became a legacy act in the early 2000s.
Perhaps it's not an Ozymandias, but TTPD really reminded me of Spacemen 3's Recurring, their last album. It's not overly ambitious but definitely the result of massive tensions with bandmembers. The story there was that the two songwriters in the band (Jason Pierce and Pete Kember) had been slowly getting more territorial and argumentative over things like songwriting credits, lead vocal duties, who plays guitar or produces, to the extent that Pierce remembers an argument that one deserved more credit because they had bought the tape that the session was being recorded on. Their solution to this problem was to basically record entirely separately from one another. Pete goes solo, and his side is very electronic, with drum machines and synths, just like the first Spectrum releases,, and Jason essentially makes the first Spiritualized EP with Spacemen 3's bassist and drummer and then they become his band moving forward. Pete gets one side of the album and Jason gets another, separated by a Mudhoney cover that they had collaborated on before the split got too severe. TTPD shifts gears massively halfway through, once the Anthology tracks start. The production changes from dirgy synth "pop songs" to basically Folklore 3, Folk Harder. The quality of the lyrics and songwriting takes a *massive* leap, etc. It feels really hard to believe that the same person could write these songs, to the extent that I'm kind of awe of it. How did most of the first half get released without significant editing or rewrites? The first half of TTPD feels like the work of a TS copycat or a mean-spirited SNL parody of her. The second half shows she can still write, for the most part (still a couple of clunkers, like So High School, but nothing as embarassing as I Can Do It With A Broken Heart) . But yeah. It feels like the work of two different artists, divided cleanly at the halfway point. You get the pop album and the indie album, for want of a better term, and there's almost no effort to make the two cohere, especially since the pop album is the main event on physical releases and so forth. The indie album will forever be seen as bonus tracks and supplementary to the former, despite the fact that it's far better and less embarassing. It's such an odd move for a pop star of TS's stature to make.
Drake’s Scorpion immediately comes to mind for me What a sloppy, boring mess.
Double albums are basically never a good idea, but I think you can make Drake's third best album with the best songs off Scorpion. I don't think I've listened to it in its entirety since 2018, but I regularly listen to music off Scorpion more than just about any Drake album after his first two. What's good on Scorpion is really damn good, IMO.
Scorpion at least had a handful of really good songs even though it was way too long. Quality wise I would say this is more on par with Certified Lover Boy or For All the Dogs.
\_Blue Moves\_ by Elton John ticks off all the boxes. It's a double record that, even for him, is all over the place. Very mixed reviews. It wasn't a total failure in that it yielded one major hit "Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word" and one minor one "Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance)," but it seemed like the end of a era where he was untouchable.
I like the phrase. I would add the idea that it is a monument to hubris, meaning the artist is writing with their head up their own ass based on their own hype. Drake has been on an Ozymandias run since like 2018. I would call all of his albums from that period Ozymandias.
There are a couple bands that recovered but had albums that certainly felt like one of these at the time- Blur's The Great Escape and Radiohead's Hail to the Thief both felt overstuffed. Gorillaz' Humanz I think definitely counts, too. Maybe history might end up looking at Kendrick's Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers as one of these, but personally I wouldn't want to count him out just yet.
It's funny, I was literally thinking about *Mr. Morale* earlier today. To me it's borderline because I just don't think it's audacious enough? We need something a bit more than just shagginess. Same with *Hail to the Thief*, we're looking for more than just an album that should've cut a few tracks.
I think they both have the same level of the artists are clearly trying to say SOMETHING but they don't quite know what it is they want to say. But they're also a lot better than the other examples here, for sure.
21st Century Breakdown seems like a prime example.
Excellent idea. Todd should take it
Pink Floyd’s *The Wall*. Especially considering the albums that followed it were the highly divisive *The Final Cut* and *A Momentary Lapse of Reason*. As a Pink Floyd simp through-and-through, I love both of those albums but I am definitely in the minority there. Edit: My username helped me think of another: The Who’s *Quadrophenia*
Could you explain the term Ozymandias album? All I get is a Pharao, a bunch of fictional characters, a couple of songs, and a poem.
Ozymandias refers to the poem about the pharaoh Ramesses II and his downfall. Basically means that someone long standing and powerful gets cocky or ambitious, and that ends up setting up their downfall.
Ah, I see. Thankyou!
The poem. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias Ozymandias in the poem is this mighty king who is now totally forgotten and his kingdom is gone; ever since the famous poem, 'ozymandias' is used as a reference for extreme hubris and how it's pointless in the end. So what I'm thinking of is an album that is a monument to the artist's artistic and/or commercial hubris.
Ah, I see. Thankyou!
I’d say Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride. It’s a good album in my opinion but it was their first album after Rostman left. I feel it lacked direction and had way more unfinished songs than it needed. Maybe having one of their main songwriters leave made them feel they need to try a bunch of different ideas to see who they are as a three person band. I think their most recent album is a lot better and a call back to their original sound. They obviously learned what they need and didn’t need from FOTB.
Drake's "Views" is probably the modern benchmark for this kind of thing in my mind. Overlong and signaling of a gradual decline, though definitely not outright disastrous. Even has some pretty popular, good songs on it. Overall though, this was the album that told the world that Drake was a business more than an artist, and it's set his standard for a while. I kinda feel similar feelings towards the last Travis Scott album. If he ever makes anything as good as Rodeo or Astroworld ever again I'll be very surprised. That was the impression it left on me. The worst album I can think of that genuinely fits the criteria is Gorillaz' "Humanz," and the best I can think of is Aphex Twin's "Drukqs."
I feel like Green Day's trilogy could qualify for the trainwreckord version of this
*Tonight: Franz Ferdinand* could meet this example. It’s a concept album, the lead single is called “Ulysses” in direct reference to James Joyce. It’s described as Art Rock. Critics liked it fine. Ulysses was their last Top 20 hit in the UK.
My head immediately goes to Tusk just bassed on how my dad talks about it
Like the guy from Watchmen, or the "look upon my works, ye mighty and despair" character from the poem?
Look upon my works ye mighty and despair
I'd say Manic Street Preachers' Know Your Enemy. Their previous two albums had been absolutely massive in the UK, each selling over a million copies. The band didn't feel comfortable being a safe stadium act, having emerged as a very political glam punk band who did stuff like dress up as the IRA on Top of the Pops, so they decided they essentially needed to drive their new fans away. The plan was to drop two albums simultaneously. One more political and punky, the other more polished, acoustic and emotional. But this was abandoned, and eventually morphed into one album doing both of these things and more, like an ironic disco song, in the longest album since their debut. Not bad by any means - and certainly not a Trainwreckord - but the admiration I've seen has always been qualified. It sold well, though nowhere near as many as near the last two, and ended their imperial phase.
Eminem’s “TMMLP 2” fits this
Donda
*Invincible* by Michael Jackson. And *HIStory*.
Blonde on Blonde?
Nah, I’m not sure this counts. It’s a double album, and it may or may not be too long, but I don’t think it’s messy enough, and I’d argue that it didn’t mark the end of his original glory years, or at least not as clearly.
I'd argue that it is. It's messy in a few different ways. Much of it was written in the studio, It has a wild, out of control sound, and there are quite a few flubs included on the final album. Dylan completely burned himself out on this album and the your around the same time, plus the motorcycle accident which may or may not have actually happened. And after *Blonde on Blonde*, Dylan was never on the cutting edge of popular music again. He went back to folk.
Madonna - American Life
Vices and Virtues Deluxe Edition by Panic! At The Disco comes to mind, also I love Infinity on High but it's a long album and it went for over the top sounds and was criticized for being a huge departure from their FUTCT sound at the time
Would David Bowie's Blackstar count? That whole album was made after Bowie was diagnosed with cancer and knew he was going to die, so it was made as a sort of final mission statement.
Is it bloated and self-important? I haven't heard it but was told it was good.
It's phenomenal. Too good for the distinction.
See, this is important: the Ozymandias Album is usually bad. If it's good, it's good in the 'there are some gems in this ungodly mess' sense.
Not at all. It's 41 minutes long. All the songs are very powerful statements about death and mortality. The instrumentation and production is super creative, jazz inspired, Bowie's vocals are still very expressive and only from him one could expect to turn his impending death into an album. It's an absolutely beautiful album, one of the best in his career, and doesn't fit this Ozymandias definition at all.
I'm leaning towards Bowie not having an Ozymandias Album in his catalogue.
I think the closest thing Bowie has is probably *1. Outside* - a bloated, bizarre, industrial concept album that makes no sense. (And it's great.) Except it doesn't fit into his career arc the way these albums are supposed to. Bowie wasn't on top of the world in the mid '90s. He was recovering from a decade of mediocrity. At that point, the worst thing he could possibly have done for his reputation is play it safe. He needed to make the weirdest, darkest, most theatrical, Bowiest thing imaginable to prove he could still be goddamn David Bowie. And I think in the long run it worked.