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Best Four Albums in a Row


Rushman2112
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Pick the best era  

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  1. 1. Which band had the best four albums in a row?

    • Led Zeppelin I, II, III, IV
    • Van Halen I, II, Women and Children First, Fair Warning
    • Rush Hemispheres, Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, Signals
    • Other (please specify)


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Beatles!

Pick any 4 in a row really.

I'll go with Wil1972's picks: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour - although Help and the White Album could easily creep in there.

 

Cheap Trick: 77, In Colour, Heaven Tonight, Dream Police

 

Beefheart: Trout Mask, Decals, Mirror Man, Spotlight Kid

 

King Crimson: Red, Discipline, Beat, 3 of a Perfect Pair

 

Who: My Generation, Magic Bus, Sell Out, Tommy

 

The first four Gary Numan records are pretty swell: Tubeway Army, Replicas, Pleasure Principle, Telekon

 

Ditto Brian Eno's first 4 "rock" albums: Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain, Another Green World, Before & After Science

 

 

http://40.media.tumblr.com/d5c4df02ac8d402f0551371dd29ebeb9/tumblr_nxknwkM3sg1s1pv8vo1_500.jpg

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Beatles!

Pick any 4 in a row really.

I'll go with Wil1972's picks: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour - although Help and the White Album could easily creep in there.

 

Cheap Trick: 77, In Colour, Heaven Tonight, Dream Police

 

Beefheart: Trout Mask, Decals, Mirror Man, Spotlight Kid

 

King Crimson: Red, Discipline, Beat, 3 of a Perfect Pair

 

Who: My Generation, Magic Bus, Sell Out, Tommy

 

The first four Gary Numan records are pretty swell: Tubeway Army, Replicas, Pleasure Principle, Telekon

 

Ditto Brian Eno's first 4 "rock" albums: Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain, Another Green World, Before & After Science

 

 

http://40.media.tumblr.com/d5c4df02ac8d402f0551371dd29ebeb9/tumblr_nxknwkM3sg1s1pv8vo1_500.jpg

 

Yea it was a tough choice - that run from Help through the White Album was amazing.

 

As for the Who I would go Sell Out, Tommy, Live at Leeds and Who's Next.

 

I totally agree with your KC picks.

Edited by Wil1972
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I forgot Def Leppard:

 

Hysteria

Adrenalize

Retro Active

Slang

 

If you don't consider Retro Active an album, which is fine, then:

 

Pyromania

Hysteria

Adrenalize

Slang

 

It ends there, though. I seriously dislike the backwards oriented Euphoria album.

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Na... The BEST 4 Rush albums in a row are:

 

Grace Under Pressure

Power Windows

Hold Your Fire

Presto

 

But the problem with that is that Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures, and Roll The Bones are all better than Presto, but since this is in a row you cannot skip Signals or Presto.

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Queen:

 

Queen II

Sheer Heart Attack

A Night At The Opera

A Day At The Races (weakest)

 

or

 

Jazz

The Game

Hot Space

The Works (weakest)

 

Yeah about this...

 

first one makes sense. Hard to leave out QII in favor of NOTW, even if it means ending on ADATR, which isn't quite the same level of awesomeness as what surrounds it.

 

Second one... I'm all for loving Hot Space, but it's almost objectively their weakest release. Experimental, sure, but a lot of it just doesn't pan out as well as it could. So putting it in there is already questionable. But saying The Works is the weakest album in the run...when you could also easily make the run from NOTW to Hot Space rather than Jazz to the Works...so your implying that The Works is not only somehow weaker than Hot Space, but also NOTW is weaker than all four of those albums...?

 

I'm sorry, that's just crazy. NOTW is one of their best records. Every song is gold. Two of them are likely two of the biggest hits in recorded music history, so ubiquitous most people have no clue they aren't just sports anthems. I cannot get behind your second choice here.

 

Also just my opinion that Jazz and The Game, while both awesome, are among their weaker releases as well...so The Works is actually my favorite album of the four you listed there.

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"You're called 2112 and you list the best Rush four album run as Hemispheres, Permanent Wave, Moving Pictures and Signals??" I would like to get 2112 in the four in a row, but I like Signals better than AFTK.

:goodone:
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Kill, Ride, Puppets and Justice from Metallica.

 

Almost....it started to go a little Pete Tong with Justice, but stellar otherwise.

 

If Justice had Cliff on it, everyone would consider it their best album.

 

 

Actually, that might even hold true if Justice had Jason on it. ;)

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Actually, that might even hold true if Justice had Jason on it. ;)

Too soon... I mean he was present throughout Garage Days Re-Revisited which was released before ..And Jason for All so there was no reason for the petty bullshit of cutting him out.
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Kill, Ride, Puppets and Justice from Metallica.

 

Almost....it started to go a little Pete Tong with Justice, but stellar otherwise.

 

If Justice had Cliff on it, everyone would consider it their best album.

 

 

Err...no...Even if Cliff had been on it and not turned almost completely off in the mix, the songs simply aren't as good as on the predecessors.

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Queen:

 

Queen II

Sheer Heart Attack

A Night At The Opera

A Day At The Races (weakest)

 

or

 

Jazz

The Game

Hot Space

The Works (weakest)

 

Yeah about this...

 

first one makes sense. Hard to leave out QII in favor of NOTW, even if it means ending on ADATR, which isn't quite the same level of awesomeness as what surrounds it.

 

Second one... I'm all for loving Hot Space, but it's almost objectively their weakest release. Experimental, sure, but a lot of it just doesn't pan out as well as it could. So putting it in there is already questionable. But saying The Works is the weakest album in the run...when you could also easily make the run from NOTW to Hot Space rather than Jazz to the Works...so your implying that The Works is not only somehow weaker than Hot Space, but also NOTW is weaker than all four of those albums...?

 

I'm sorry, that's just crazy. NOTW is one of their best records. Every song is gold. Two of them are likely two of the biggest hits in recorded music history, so ubiquitous most people have no clue they aren't just sports anthems. I cannot get behind your second choice here.

 

Also just my opinion that Jazz and The Game, while both awesome, are among their weaker releases as well...so The Works is actually my favorite album of the four you listed there.

 

 

 

So let's unpack this massive difference in opinion on Queen that we are having. For me Queen albums from the 70s are heavily dependent on songs written by Freddie. As they go, so goes the album. I personally find Roger's & Brian's songs from the 70s to be weaker than not only Freddie's songs, but their own contributions from the 80s & 90s with a few exceptions. So here is my personal list of Queen albums from favourite to least:

 

01. Jazz

02. Queen II

03. Sheer Heart Attack

04. A Night At The Opera

05. Hot Space

06. The Game

07. A Day At The Races

08. The Works

09. A Kind Of Magic

10. Innuendo

11. The Miracle

12. News Of The World

13. Made In Heaven

14. Queen

15. Flash Gordon*

 

* - I forgot about this damn thing, so my second 4 in a row doesn't actually work!

 

So, you see there is News Of The World sitting at 12 for me. Sure, it has a great double A side single with We Are the Champions / We Will Rock You and a fantastic Freddie song in Get Down Make Love and... hmmm... there is another Freddie song in the form of My Melancholy Blues which I dislike and a shit-ton of mediocre to bad Roger & Brian songs. Oh and then there is Spread Your Wings which is the second single and a sort of run-of-the-mill John Deacon song. It's a very good song, but not his best. That other John song is utterly forgettable. Now Jazz on the other hand is chocked full of some of the best Freddie songs ever written! Bicycle Race is in contention for my favourite ever Queen song, but there is Don't Stop Me Now, Mustapha, Let Me Entertain You, and Jealousy as well. I like every song I have listed so far from Jazz better than ANY song off News Of The World! But wait, there's more!!! On top of that Roger's and Brian's songwriting was improving (It would have to, since Freddie's would drop off in the 80s). Dead On Time & Fat Bottomed Girls both are in my Top 5 Brian songs from the 70s and better than any Brian songs from News Of The World. More Of That Jazz and Fun It! are my two favourite Roger songs from the 70s (The bar was low). In my opinion Roger's songwriting would carry the 80s albums and he was finally becoming a good songwriter on Jazz. I also really like In Only Seven Days and If You Can't Beat Them, so for me John was on point too. Of the songs left, I would consider Leaving Home Ain't Easy the 7th best song if it was on News Of The World and Dreamer's Ball a throwaway. But really, 1 bad song out of 13; who's complaining about that?!?!?!

 

Now for Queen II: Side Black is amazing Freddie song after amazing Freddie song and includes two of my absolute favourite Freddie songs ever, The March Of The Black Queen and The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke. Side White, albeit weaker than Black, contains some of the best Brian songs from the 70s with White Queen (As It Began) (BBC version please), Some Day One Day, and Father To Son. Not quite as good as his later stuff, but still right up there with anything he wrote in the 70s. I also am more fond of Loser In the End than almost anything Roger wrote from Sheer Heart Attack through News Of The World.

 

I think for people who expected Queen to be a straight ahead rock band Hot Space is very challenging. For me it marks the first album that I love both of Roger's songs. Calling All Girls in particular is a very worthy single choice, but I love Action This Day too. Brian was continuing to improve as well as evidenced by another great single in the form of Las Palabras de Amor and the wonderful Put Out the Fire (I'm not American. I hate guns and think they should be illegal to own AND even think police should be disarmed too, so the subject matter is perfect for me). This was also the last album where Freddie was fully engaged before he got sick. After this point his heart wasn't in the band as much and it showed. I really do love the 3 songs he wrote alone for this album; Life Is Real, Staying Power, and Body Language, although none of them as much as anything he wrote for Jazz or Queen II. John got very R&B influenced at the time which wasn't my favourite move, but I still rather liked the Single Remix of Back Chat and everyone loves Under Pressure. I have no use for either Cool Cat or Dancer or that terrible B-side Soul Brother, but the album overall has more songs I love than either The Game or The Works.

 

As for The Works, it is pretty damn short on songs overall and has a few clunkers thrown in. If I never listen to Machines (Or 'Back to Humans') or Man on the Prowl again it will be fine with me. That Christmas song that came out as part of this album cycle was awful too. The Brian songs here are very good. Both Hammer To Fall and Tear It Up are tops. Freddie is great on It's A Hard Life, but just okay on Keep Passing The Open Windows. Then there is the two hit singles by Roger & John which are both great. Radio Ga Ga in particular really foreshadows what is to come as Roger takes the lead as the writer of the hit singles, but I Want To Break Free is equally good and probably the last John song I truly think is awesome. Overall for me though the album is much weaker than either Jazz or Hot Space and a little below The Game (which I have not discussed). The ballad at the end isn't really to my liking and it feels somehow unfinished to me. It's not something I love listening to.

 

I hope this answers your questions and please remember that neither your nor popular opinion actually portends of a greater truth. I believe the reason News Of The World is more highly regarded than Jazz is not because it is a better album (which in my opinion it isn't close), but rather because the double A side single released from it is so incredibly popular that it raises the album's esteem overall in the general public. You are also not going to hear Bicycle Race or Don't Stop Me Now at sporting events like you would We Are the Champions and We Will Rock You. Those two songs have an enduring legacy in the public consciousness that is almost unsurpassed. This raises (unfortunately, in my opinion) the status of News Of The World, but really never addresses the fact that aside from those two songs there is little else that most people would care about from that album. For many Queen fans (especially in the US where those songs were a bigger breakthrough commercially than Bohemian Rhapsody or anything preceding it), the album probably holds a special place in their hearts as the first album they bought. It wasn't my first so I hold no special esteem for it. If you want to know, I took Greatest Hits from my parent's collection as a little kid, but the first album I bought for myself by Queen was A Kind Of Magic. I am a child of the 80s.

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By listing Hot Space at #5, you've lost a lot of us.

 

Luckily Nuno agrees with me: "Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt described how Hot Space was an important album for him as a musician. "I think it's interesting because that album taught me two things. It taught me that even if you're in a band as a guitar player, music doesn't have to be driven by guitar - it's about the song, first. But I think the main thing is that Queen actually did an album like that - it was the fans' least favorite, but it was one of my favorites because it took a risk and branched out. All those synth parts they did and horns, I could always hear them with guitar in my head somehow. But quite oddly enough, or coincidentally enough, the title Hot Space is exactly what it meant: it's all the space between the music. That's what makes it funky and that's what makes it have a pocket."

 

So I'm not really worried about people respecting or not my personal preferences.

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By listing Hot Space at #5, you've lost a lot of us.

 

Luckily Nuno agrees with me: "Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt described how Hot Space was an important album for him as a musician. "I think it's interesting because that album taught me two things. It taught me that even if you're in a band as a guitar player, music doesn't have to be driven by guitar - it's about the song, first. But I think the main thing is that Queen actually did an album like that - it was the fans' least favorite, but it was one of my favorites because it took a risk and branched out. All those synth parts they did and horns, I could always hear them with guitar in my head somehow. But quite oddly enough, or coincidentally enough, the title Hot Space is exactly what it meant: it's all the space between the music. That's what makes it funky and that's what makes it have a pocket."

 

So I'm not really worried about people respecting or not my personal preferences.

I respect it, just don't share it.

 

And it's not that I don't like that kind of music. Soul and dance music was a big part of what I was raised on. I just don't like Queen's version of it as presented on Hot Space.

Edited by goose
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I chose RUSH too, but think the best 4 would be Kings / Hemispheres / PeW / Moving Pictures.
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