10 Artists Who Truly Hate Their Own Albums
Yes, Bruce Springsteen really did hate 'Born To Run'.
Hindsight really is a killer, isn’t it?
Do you ever sit alone in the comforting, solitary darkness of your bedroom when suddenly your mind flashes back to that stupid thing you said on a date seven years ago and now you have to quit your job and flee the country because you can simply never show your face in public again?
Well, imagine feeling that way about a piece of work that millions of people around the world still consume, and enjoy, every day. Such is the life of a musician. Having albums out that everyone loves, including you, must be a gratifying feeling — but having albums out that you bloody hate and that you can’t take out circulation must be absolutely mortifying.
Therefore, we’ve compiled a list of those who can’t bloody stand their own albums because nothing says true love like reminding you of your most humiliating moments.
Grimes — Art Angels
As the ever bewildering Grimes — ahem sorry, c — gears up for the release of her upcoming album Miss Anthropocene, it seems that she hasn’t grown that fond her last album, 2015’s Art Angels. In fact, in a recent interview with Cultured magazine, she reportedly called the album “a piece of crap” and “a stain on her life.”
Jesus, tell us how you really feel.
Bruce Springsteen — Born To Run
Believe it or not, but there was once a point in time where The Boss couldn’t stand his seminal work Born To Run.
In an interview with Slate, he revealed how he felt about the album just before its 1975 release: “After it was finished? I hated it! I couldn’t stand to listen to it,” he said. “I thought it was the worst piece of garbage I’d ever heard.”
Drake — Thank Me Later
Drake’s dominance over the global recording industry has been so strong for so long now that it’s hard to imagine a time when he wasn’t at the top of the charts.
His debut album Thank Me Later came out almost a full decade (!!!) ago and he has since admitted that he thought it was pretty bloody weak.
“To be 100 percent honest,” he told LA Times, “I wasn’t necessarily happy with Thank Me Later. People loved it [but] I just knew what I was capable of with a little more time.”
Charli XCX — Sucker
It was the album that gave the internet’s favourite popstar her breakthrough into the mainstream, but its creator frankly thinks it, well, sucked.
In an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1, she let slip that she hates the 2014 album while talking about her 2015 single ‘After The Afterparty’ which features Lil Yachty.
“I kind of hit him up on the internet,” she said. “And he hit me back. He was like ‘I love your album Sucker!’ Which I was like whoa, that’s cool because I, like, hate that album now. So it’s cool that he likes it.”
It’s because Yachty has TASTE, Charlotte.
Nirvana — Nevermind
It might be one of the most iconic albums of the ’90s — perhaps even all time — but that didn’t mean Kurt Cobain wasn’t fkn off it. Speaking to journalist Michael Azerrad for the book Come As You Are — published in 1993 — Cobain said he was embarrassed by the album’s production and compared it to the music of Mötley Crüe.
“Looking back on the production of Nevermind, I’m embarrassed by it now,” he said. “It’s closer to a Mötley Crüe record than it is a punk rock record.”
The Beatles — Let It Be
It’s understandable that The Beatles couldn’t stand their final studio album, Let It Be, given they hated each other’s guts while they were recording it.
Harrison walked out of recording sessions after bickering with both McCartney and Lennon, and then quit the band entirely. McCartney couldn’t stand the album. Starr was apparently indifferent, but Lennon once gave it a bit of a roundabout compliment.
“Given the shittiest load of badly-recorded shit with a lousy feeling to it ever, he made something of it,” Lennon said of the album and producer Phil Spector.
Lennon always had such a way with words.
Eminem — Relapse
Look, you’ll struggle to find someone that actually liked Eminem’s 2009 album Relapse, so it should come as no surprise that Mathers himself isn’t too fond of it. In fact, he’s made sure people know about his feelings towards it known multiple times.
On his 2011 smash, ‘Not Afraid’, he raps “Let’s be honest, that last Relapse CD was ehhh/Perhaps I ran them accents into the ground.” Ya think?
Lykke Li — Youth Novels
Sometimes it’s best to not say anything at all if it isn’t something nice.
That’s perhaps what Lykke Li should’ve considered when she bashed her debut album, 2008’s Youth Novels. “I cannot stand my first album,” she told UK’s The Daily Telegraph in 2014 ahead of the release of her admittedly greater album I Never Learn. “It is so bad. I sucked.”
Oasis — Be Here Now
There are some objectively beautiful things in this world: rainbows, roses, the way the Gallagher brothers string sentences together. They generally save their most eloquent sentences for things that they hate — and boy, do they hate some stuff — and one of those heinous artefacts is their 1997 album Be Here Now.
In an interview with XFM, Gallagher put his disdain for the album in such an elegant way that it really has to be seen to be believed.
“The sound of a bunch of guys, on coke, in the studio, not giving a fuck,” he said. “All the songs are really long and all the lyrics are shit and for every millisecond Liam is not saying a word, there’s a fucking guitar riff in there in a Wayne’s World style.”
God bless.
U2 — Pop
Given that Pop was by far and away the most hated U2 album (and that includes the time they dropped a record onto everyone’s phones without permission), maybe it’s not a surprise that U2 ended up being less than impressed with it themselves.
Bono famously called it “the most expensive demo in the history of music” — which, to be honest, is a kind assessment of a record that attempt to make O.J. Simpson a humorous subject.
Jackson Langford is a freelance music and culture writer from Newcastle. He would never hate his own album. He tweets at @jacksonlangford.