SEVEN good songs on bad albums

i listened to these albums so you don't have to

Albums can be good, but albums can also be bad. On top of this, good albums can contain bad songs, and… bad albums can contain good songs. Sometimes that good song is a highly misleading single, other times it’s an unexpected deep cut outperforming everything else: whatever it may be, I would like to highlight SEVEN lovely songs on not-very-lovely records: tracks that would otherwise most likely be forgotten due to the fact that they come as a shitty package deal.

Turnover - Ain’t Love Heavy

Turnover’s 2022 album Myself in the Way is pretty ass. It’s a mind-numbingly boring exploration of “”psychedelic”” vibes on a canvas of sheer boredom, and rarely abandons its framework of squeaky-clean synths + apathetic vocals. Thankfully, “Ain’t Love Heavy” does slightly more and turns into a rather lovely song. In all fairness, this is in large part due to Bre Morell’s silk-like vocals adorning the entire second half of the song: when paired with a more interesting vocalist, Turnover’s lazy-sounding instrumentals suddenly make a lot more sense. It’s a lovely vibey song that you can dance to, but only on the tiniest of dancefloors.

Poppy - The Attic

Name me a single song off of Poppy’s album Zig that isn’t “The Attic”, I dare you. Okay, sure, the title track’s main hook is sort of memorable in all the wrong ways: I don’t remember the melody, but I believe its lyrics are “you zig, I zag”. Riveting stuff. Anyway, “The Attic” is a delightful song: its choppy beat contrasts beautifully with the ever-expanding dreamy chorus, and it feels like what the album could and should have been. Instead, the other ten tracks on that album are entirely forgettable.

Knuckle Puck - Into the Blue

20/20, Knuckle Puck’s album that came out in 2020, ha ha get it, isn’t very good. It’s a collection of absolute nothingburger pop punk songs. In all fairness, most of those songs aren’t that bad, they’re just not interesting (not even by pop punk standards). However, buried deep in the track list, one will find “Into the Blue”: a song with a sharp hook, bouncy choruses, and non-cringy vocals. What more could a pop punk song need, amirite?

Bad Omens - NERVOUS SYSTEM

While this SEVEN is about bad albums, I do think that Bad Omens’ CONCRETE JUNGLE [THE OST] is interesting in that it’s just kind of dumb. It’s quite plainly a “buying time” project: some remixes, some live songs, some new songs that are pretty whatever. For the most part, these new songs highlight the quote unquote industrial elements of the band’s sound. Also for the most part, it doesn’t work. Thankfully, “NERVOUS SYSTEM” is the exception: iRis.EXE’s vocals add a lot to the hypnotic-but-not-overblown-for-once soundscape, making for a perfectly great song. Is it worth sitting through an hour and a half of slop for this track? Probably not.

Chalk - Pain

I’m not quite sure what happened to Chalk. Their EPs are decent-to-excellent hardcore-infused post punk, but their debut full length is mostly awkward-sounding dancey punk. It’s a shame, especially given the fact that single “Pain” manages to establish a rather wonderful groove. Even if it doesn’t explode the way their old stuff (three whole years) does, it felt like a productive next step for the band: if only every song managed to be this hypnotic. Oh well, better luck next time.

The Maine - My Best Habit

The Maine kind of fucked up with You Are OK. For the first time ever, the band managed to put out a collection of overproduced and underwritten songs, plummeting from the heights of American Candy and Lovely Little Lonely. As a direct result of the strange production choices, the only moment that stands out is due to its razor-sharp hook: “My Best Habit” is classic The Maine. It’s carefree, it’s catchy as all hell, and, most importantly, it feels like a sugary drink on a summer day. The remainder of the album does, uh, not.

Beartooth - The Last Riff

Perhaps Beartooth hasn’t been very good ever, but Disgusting hit like a ton of bricks when I was sixteen. Their subsequent records, including Below, have mostly been poppy metalcore of various degrees of fastfood, with the band becoming one of the most painfully predictable outfits ever. Verse chorus verse chorus breakdown chorus and onto the next one. This isn’t solely what sets the entirely instrumental “The Last Riff” apart, though: it’s also just… kind of enthralling by its own merits. For whatever excellent reason, Beartooth embrace post-metal and just lock the fuck in for about five minutes, crafting a song that I did not think the band were capable of. If only they did more of that.

If only. Oh well. Oh yeah. Thank you for reading, and remember to always be the good song on a bad album… or something.