10 items
The 1996 Rolling Stone Critics Poll labelled Pinkerton one of the worst albums of the year, though the original review by Rob O'Connor was significantly less vitriolic. "Weezer over-rely on catchy tunes to heal all of Cuomo's wounds. In 'El Scorcho,' the song's infectious chorus proves to be slim reward. 'Tired of Sex,' a look […]
Ira Robbins' three-star review of Nevermind is perhaps the most notorious Rolling Stone review of the 1990s, but reading through it now it's clear that Robbins really enjoyed the album. It almost reads like a four-star review. He truly understood their influences and placed it within the context of its time. How was he supposed […]
Sometimes a reviewer just seems to have a really, really low opinion of a band, which seems to be the case with Dave Marsh and Queen. Years later, their album Jazz only got a marginally better review in the Album Guide, though this time around they weren't labeled "fascists." "There's no Jazz on Queen's new […]
Imagine it's 1976 and you get a new album thrown on your desk featuring songs like "She's Got Balls" by a bunch of brash Australians, one of whom dresses up like a demented schoolboy. You probably wouldn't guess they'd become one of the biggest hard-rock acts of all time, still capable of packing stadiums even […]
Right around the same time he began working with Bruce Springsteen, labeled by many the "new Dylan," Jon Landau took a listen to the newest album by the old Dylan and didn't like what he heard. Sometimes the magazine took decades to revise a questionable review, but in this case they ran an opposing viewpoint […]
Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye is a brilliant writer and the genius behind Nuggets, and he likely has come to gain more respect for Exile on Main Street than he did back in 1972 when he filed this review. "Exile on Main Street appears to take up where Sticky Fingers left off, with the Stones […]
Three years after ripping apart Led Zeppelin's first two albums, John Mendelsohn unleashed his venom on Neil Young's Harvest. "Harvest, a painfully long year-plus in the making (or, seemingly more aptly, assembling), finds Neil Young invoking most of the L.A. variety of superstardom's weariest cliches in an attempt to obscure his inability to do a […]
Lester Bangs is one of the most esteemed rock writers in history, but even he didn't quite get Black Sabbath when he heard their first record back in 1970. "Over across the tracks in the industrial side of Cream country lie unskilled laborers like Black Sabbath, which was hyped as a rockin' ritual celebration of […]
Led Zeppelin were a brand new blues-rock band opening for the likes of Vanilla Fudge and Iron Butterfly when Rolling Stone ran such a scathing review of their debut LP that the group held a grudge for decades. "The latest of the British blues groups so conceived offers little that its twin, the Jeff Beck […]
In the very first issue of Rolling Stone, Jon Landau expressed his deep dissatisfaction with the new album by a young band called the Jimi Hendrix Experience. "Everything else is insane and simply a matter of either you dig it or you don't. Basically I don't for several reasons. Despite Jimi's musical brilliance and the […]