10 Terrible Rock Albums (That Aren't As Bad As You Think)

Everybody deserves a second chance, right?

Green Day 21st century breakdown
Reprise Records

No musician is absolutely flawless. For as much great music that your favorite act has put out, chances are that there are more than a few stinkers in their back catalog. On the other hand, some of the pariahs of these artists' discography don't really deserve the hate they have gotten.

Granted, are all of these albums masterpieces? Hell, no. In fact, there are legitimate problems to be had with almost every album on here. Though there are some trash across these records, there is also a subtle glimmer of the magic that we loved these bands for in the first place.

It might not have been enough to save the album as a whole, but it's a welcome inclusion in the band's body of work regardless.

These albums might not have worked out as a whole, but they have surely done a lot more good than they have harm over the years. There's probably a certain hipster who scoffs at these albums, but if you look a little closer, there's plenty of decent material to choose from here.

10. X - Def Leppard

The '00s is known as the period where Def Leppard started to go very wrong. After winning back their hardcore fanbase on the album Euphoria, the band took another bold step towards extinction with X, which saw them flirting with even poppier styles of rock music. For all the hard rock elitists crying foul, many never took into account that the album is exactly fairly decent.

Make no mistake, this is not the Def Leppard that you are really looking for, but every note on the record is played to absolute perfection. Though the songs are a lot more pop than rock, the band hasn't lost their touch of a good hook, with songs like "Now" and "Torn To Shreds" still having that larger than life sound the band perfected back in the '80s.

Although some songs end up sounding to '00s-ish for their own good, it's not like this whole thing was out of left field.

Even on earlier projects like Pyromania and Hysteria, Def Leppard were never known to be the dirtiest rock band in the world, so this really seems to be the logical next step. X may be considered a sell out for many fans, but the hooks on this thing are still as sharp as they were when they were first released.

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