Rock's Most Hated Albums

For the record, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" isn't a bad song. It just isn't an Aerosmith song. Not that anyone should have been too surprised when they recorded their only No. 1 single – written by Diane Warren and heard on the soundtrack to the movie 'Armageddon' – in 1998. Outside songwriters had been brought in for the band's past couple albums; this hit ballad was the inevitable outcome of these mainstream collaborations. Again, we like the song, but it's a long, long way from "Sweet Emotion."

Collins was bigger as a solo star than he was as a member of Genesis in 1985. His third album, 'No Jacket Required,' hit No. 1 all over the world, and the song that opens it, "Sussudio," also made it to the top of the chart. But that hasn't deflected all the hate hurled at the song in the three decades since its release. The rolling-downhill-with-no-brakes synth riff that tumbles throughout recalls Prince's much-better "1999," which even Collins has acknowledged. He claims the song is about a girl, but after all these years, nobody is really sure what the hell "Sussudio" even means.

The late Cornell was one of modern rock's greatest singers. But for his third solo album, the Soundgarden frontman abandoned that comfort zone and made a pop record with hip-hop producer Timbaland. The result was as disjointed as you'd expect, with rock 'n' roll fans scorning the record (or flat out ignoring it) and Top 40 fans greeting it with a massive shrug. Points for trying something new, we guess, but there's not much here to like.

The '60s' greatest songwriter entered the '70s with a double album filled with cover songs, traditional numbers and some half-ass originals that left most fans confused and ready to move on to Don McLean or somebody like that. It took Dylan several years to recover and rebound from this mess. A 'Bootleg Series' revisit in 2013 tightened the focus and strengthened the foundation (a little, at least) of one of rock's all-time biggest blunders.

Billy Joel borrowed music (rapid-fire verses spouted off a la Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues") and lyric (pop-culture references ripped from headlines past and present) styles from R.E.M.'s infinitely better "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," released two years earlier. But R.E.M. were still a cult band at the time, so Joel ended up with a No. 1 single with this graceless and ham-fisted history lesson disguised as Deep Pop Song.

Boy, were Beatles fans disappointed when Lennon released his first solo album in 1968. Not only was it an experimental LP filled with the kind of grunts, noises, found sounds and various other audio assaults that made 'Revolution 9' the must-skip 'White Album' track, it was an experimental LP filled with grunts, noises, found sounds and various other audio assaults made with future wife Yoko Ono.

Reed and Metallica are no strangers to hate on their own. His 1975 LP 'Metal Machine Music' often shows up on all-time-worst-albums lists. And pretty much everything Metallica has done since the 'Black Album' brings out the worst in old-school fans still stuck in 1986. So there was no way their 2011 collaboration would be met with anything but scorn. That said, 'Lulu' deserved much of it. It's a bloated mess, with Reed telling some sort of story over tuneless noise provided by a bored-sounding Metallica.

R.E.M. had tested the frothy pop waters a couple years earlier with "Stand" but, with 1991's "Shiny Happy People," they went in head first. A decade earlier, the band released its first single, setting in motion the evolution of college rock, which eventually spawned the alt-rock revolution of the '90s. But this shiny, happy and airheaded single from the otherwise great 'Out of Time' album seemed out of step with the times and R.E.M.'s royal reputation.

Opener "One Hit (To the Body)" is one of the best Stones songs of the '80s. But that's about the only good thing to be found on this 1986 dud. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were barely on speaking terms during the making of the record, and that disconnect can be heard in the band's most lifeless set of songs. It was a tough decade for a lot of classic-rock artists trying to stay relevant. 'Dirty Work' isn't embarrassing, it's worse: excessively boring.

Van Halen were used to this by now. Another singer, another album ... After their split with Sammy Hagar, the band called in Extreme's Gary Cherone for one ill-fated album, which they named 'Van Halen III' in hopes of sparking a grand new era. It didn't turn out that way. Most fans were tired of the revolving-frontman game (no fault of Cherone's), and it didn't help that the band just didn't sound into making yet another record. It would be 14 years before Van Halen recorded a new album, this time with original singer David Lee Roth.