Hey I'm Brian Hyatt and this is Rolling Stone Music Now.

There's a new list on our website by Andy Green called 50

Genuinely Horrible albums by brilliant artists.

There is some very obvious stuff on there. There's some stuff that is

controversial. There's some stuff that is surprising and above all there is stuff that is

awful. Although I do disagree with some of Andy's picks as I will tell him. I do have Andy here to go through the

list. We'll probably just hit the first 25 today and return to the rest later. I did notice some commonalities

between these albums. One of them is contractual obligations,

artists making albums that they didn't really want to make

that never seemed to yield anything good.

Yes, there was a lot of bands at the end of their run

that owed one more record and just kind of chat one out.

The 80s famously were a tough time for veteran acts.

It's not just the 80s, it's the mid 80s.

I found this over and over again. There's so many times I've picked out a group's

first album and it would be between like 86 and 88 or something, this little window where the

drum machines and the scents were so just god-awful.

There was this feeling like you can't do what you actually do, you have to do some

scinted-out version of what you do.

It ended up with some ridiculous results.

They'd see Rod Stewart or Steve Wynn Wood or Elton John with these giant hits that are on MTV

and they wanted that too. It was jumping on trend band wagons that aren't really yours like trying to be

...