If you're a masochist like I am, you've probably listened to at least part of every album covered in the Albummer show. And if you grew up in the ranked-list-obsessed era of the Internet like I did, then you also have the same kneejerk reaction to sort the albums into a hierarchy from best / "best" to worst. The crew just reviewed their 13th album this week, which seemed like an auspicious number to publish my ranking of what they've covered so far. I may update this list in the future, or I might re-evaluate my decisions and rank everything in total once we get another 13 (or the series ends before that). Lastly, it's important that I make it clear these are rigorously science-based rankings, and any disagreements are factually incorrect.
1. Jugulator, Judas Priest
We start off with one of the, if not the only, actually good album(s) covered by the 2M2LN crew. This is the only Albummer on which I enjoyed every track, and it’s the only one I would listen to a second time unironically. I haven’t listened to a lot of Judas Priest, so maybe longtime fans would dislike something on the album, but I thought it ranged from solid to great very consistently. Even the 9-minute-long closer “Cathedral Spires” is a song I’d like to hear again, and I’ve generally soured on epics. Overall, I’m not sure how any other album discussed in the show could be #1.
2. Songs of Innocence, U2
I will admit, I was one of those people who was so irritated that Apple forced a U2 album on my phone that I permanently deleted it. Listening to this album for the first time in 2021, removed from the jokes and outrage about it, I thought it was fine. There are no tracks that were egregiously bad (which disappointed me), but there was also nothing I would seek out again after finishing the album. I definitely didn’t like “Sleep Like A Baby Tonight”, but musically there was nothing wrong with it. The overall production work from Danger Mouse probably elevated the album to fully tolerable heights; it certainly sounds like the sessions with him formed the bulk of material with which the band was satisfied. Overall, it's fine! U2 is fine.
3. 44/876, Sting & Shaggy
I don’t really like reggae or Sting. Perhaps this means I’m being too generous with this album, as I don’t have a good hold on what good reggae sounds like. Aside from some extremely questionable vocal affectation from our pal Gordon, the lowlights of this album were spread out and relatively isolated from each other. Shaggy did his level best to make this entertaining, especially in “Crooked Tree” (aka the Reggae Court song). And of course, this album gave us “Sad Trombone”, an objectively hilarious track for many reasons. The title track and “Just One Lifetime” are the only true stinkers in my reckoning, and at least the production quality was high on those. Side note: Emily, I’m sorry you had to see this win a Grammy in person.
4. Father of All Motherfuckers, Green Day
This is the first album on the list that I would personally consider a bummer. Like many people, I fell off Green Day in the mid-2000’s. This was the first full album of theirs I had listened to since American Idiot, and the best thing I can say about it is that one can draw a pretty straight line from 2004 to this. It’s a shame they spend all 10 tracks committing what the 2M2LN crew dubbed “vibe theft”, and track titles like “I Was A Teenage Teenager” invoke an instant sneer from me. As with Songs of Innocence, nothing leaps out as musically dire to me. Best of all, the total duration of the album is approximately 26 minutes, which I found to be a major plus.
5. The Return of Bruno, Bruce Willis
Credit where credit is due: Bruce is having a lot of fun on this album. He also managed to rope in a staggering amount of talent (side note: how???), ensuring the floor for album quality remains high. In an effort to seemingly offset the skills of his contributors, Bruce adopts the persona of a bartender / sexual predator who occasionally shouts like a Muppet (as noted by the 2M2LN crew). There is a whole to-do around the "return" part of this album, and as Katie pointed out, it’s an incredibly high concept album for someone who was that relatively unknown. The majority of the album is covers, leaving only three original tracks. “Young Blood” is my choice for the album’s low point, as it takes the excesses, inappropriateness, and bizarreness to new heights. This is the last listenable record on this list, by the way.
6. Van Weezer, Weezer
I admire audacity in art. Taking four well-known riffs and repurposing them into, just an example, some lame breakup song with cutesy ocean animals is certainly audacious. Titling your album Van Weezer and then using precisely zero Van Halen riffs is even more audacious. And singing about middle school girls’ sweat into your 50’s is auda- no, actually it just sucks. This album contains a few legitimately good tracks that get absolutely buried by crap like “Blue Dream” and “Precious Metal Girl”. Taken on the whole, it feels like a typical Rivers Cuomo joke - not nearly as funny or as clever as he clearly thinks. At least that abysmal "Tell Me What You Want" song from Summer Game Fest wasn't on this.
7. Rebirth, Lil Wayne
While I will double down on this being an unlistenable album, I need to give it credit for one thing: absolutely grinding down my expectations for the rest of it by assaulting me with the worst track up front. “American Star” is truly awful, but by listening to it first, it centered me for future tracks. The album actually felt close to working at times as a result, which is simply good work on the back end. Lil’ Wayne seems very enthusiastic about the whole mess, and as the 2M2LN crew noted, this came at the height of his powers (see: my comment in the Weezer entry about audacity). I admire this album, but I sincerely hope I never hear anything from it again (aside from “Get A Life”, that was a fun song).
8. Playing with Fire, KevinFederline
In short, I expected worse. This is the lowest-rated album on Metacritic, by all rights it should be one of the worst things I’ve ever heard. Surprisingly, it doesn't even make the bottom 5 of this list. K-Fed is not a good rapper, or even a baseline competent one, but he does fake it enough times to bop along for a minute or two every so often. My vote for worst track goes to “Lose Control”, although the title track and “Kept On Talkin’” get honorable mentions. I can’t see the word “snap” anymore without applying Federline’s bizarre affectation. And the line “budge me I think not, I’m too pudgy” is one I think about several times a week. If your definition of good is more equivalent to “entertaining”, then you probably have this rated a lot higher than I do. But is it the worst album covered by the show? Not a chance.
9. Too Legit for the Pit: Hardcore Takes the Rap, Various Artists
There was definitely some fun to be had here, but it was more than offset by the sheer amount of “ha ha get it, we’re doing covers of rap” present in most of the tracks. This compilation simply didn’t need to exist, as evidenced by how difficult it seemed to get recognizable bands to agree to participate. Some of them might have agreed just to be able to say the N-word with the defense that it’s just how the song goes. The covers of “Baby Got Back”, “Express Yourself”, “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”, and “Bust A Move” are excruciating. At least it kept Bad Luck 13 away from society for however long it took them to record their contribution.
10. Greatest Hits: Believers Never Die - Volume Two, Fall Out Boy
I’m a 2000’s era Fall Out Boy apologist, and I can’t defend any songs on this album. The fact it’s a greatest hits album only makes that even sadder. I’m with Jordan in that the only thing I enjoyed was “Uma Thurman”, and only for the Munsters guitar riff. Thanks to We Be Drummin’, I was also prepared for the more excruciating moments of that song in advance. Everything else, especially “Young Volcanoes”, just sounds terrible. I’d ask “what happened to Fall Out Boy”, but it’s pretty clear I was the one who was wrong about them. [Editor's Note: it appears the We Be Drummin' episode I linked to has been taken down for copyright reasons, which sucks ass.]
11. Angelic 2 the Core, Corey Feldman
Admittedly, this is the point at which it becomes clear this entire list is subject to listener expectations. It’s how an album from a former child actor that took a decade to produce and roughly the same amount of time to listen to occupies a slot higher than the very bottom. Why would I expect anything listenable from Corey Feldman in 2016? “Go 4 It!” is a disaster of overproduction from start to finish, and it still manages to sound cheap. Corey delves into cultural appropriation in “Lickety Splickety”, and he shouts like Tom Waits drowning in quicksand over random noises in “Lovin Lies”. The throughline is Corey sending out his “angels” to spread positivity through the world (exposition delivered via interminable and creepy skits), yet the message is how he’s rising above his haters. I won’t even get into the online brouhaha that emerged during the album’s release, but I encourage reading this article by Sean O’Neal that summarizes the situation well. All I know is that, as Lucy pointed out, this is definitely a psy-op.
12. St. Anger,Metallica
Back in March, when the aforementioned We Be Drummin’ covered Guitar Hero: Metallica, I decided to finally listen to this album for the first time. By the end of its agonizing 75 minutes in length, I felt physically ill. This is the calling card of the bottom tier of this list, where the production values finally catch up to the rest of the album in poor quality. That snare sounds terrible, and I’m never fully prepared for it when I go back and listen to one of these songs again. The three tracks back to back of “St. Anger”, “Some Kind of Monster”, and “Dirty Window” might be the very worst 20 minutes of continuous music found on a single LP. It’s pure dysfunction, aimlessness, and confusion for a washed-up band distilled into something that is not only legendarily reviled but, even worse, a Grammy winner. But Jeremy summed it up perfectly by saying: “it’s a well-defined concept, it just sounds like shit and it sucks”. And despite all of that… it’s not the worst thing this show has covered.
13. Danzig SingsElvis, Danzig
I hope this one isn’t a surprise to anybody (although I understand if Corey Feldman was your choice). I am personally amazed that as a culture, we all immediately annihilated the Gal Gadot “Imagine” video, and then a month-ish later we let this one slide. This plodding journey through Elvis’ dregs is the most unlistenable thing I’ve ever put on, and I got through all of “Lulu” in a single sitting. There is no shortage of examples of the worst production I’ve heard from someone with this much industry experience: from Danzig’s worseningmouth noises, to the guitarist slowly backing away from the microphone, and to the complete inability to balance any sounds on any of the tracks. I can’t even eviscerate the songs more effectively through description than just stating their titles and letting you remember how they sounded. “Love Me”. “Like A Baby”. “Lonely Blue Boy”. It’s not every day, or even every year, that I get this big a stinker to listen to. And for this, I’m eternally grateful to the 2M2LN crew.
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