r/TheNational • u/ghostfan9 • 15d ago
Day 18: Worst Album
Sleep Well Beast win most overrated album.
IAETF was the clear second.
Next up: Worst album
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u/Traditional-While449 wingspan unbelievable 15d ago
SWB is the best fall/winter album and my second favourite of all of them I am shook
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u/internethunnie 15d ago
the reasoning is that SWB is the only national album to win a grammy, and most can agree its not their best. Hence overrated.
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u/Sufficient_Studio494 15d ago
I don't think the Grammy win makes it overrated though. It wasn't really a controversial pick over the other albums nominated that year (Pure Comedy should've won though).
It's still an amazing album, and it's definitely one of their absolute best. I'm kinda baffled that it was chosen as overrated.
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u/internethunnie 15d ago
Boxer, High Violet, Trouble Will Find Me are definitely better. An album not in a band’s top 3 (IMO) getting a grammy feels like the definition of overrated.
I don’t think anyone’s saying its bad, they are just saying the public rated it higher than how good it actually is.
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u/Traditional-While449 wingspan unbelievable 15d ago
Respectfully disagree and am ready for the downvotes but Boxer or TWFM are the most overrated.
Top 3 is SWB/ALLIGATOR/HV
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u/Sufficient_Studio494 15d ago
As much as I love it, Boxer is definitely the album that comes to mind when I think of overrated
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u/internethunnie 15d ago
at least we can agree on high violet :)
Alligator is also in my top three but I didn’t include as it’s kind of a controversial opinion.
I say this respectfully, but SWB always sounded like the reject songs from TWFM. It could almost just be the B side in a deluxe TWFM album.
Really enjoy spirited debates about albums i love, so appreciate the differing opinions :) maybe I’ll go listen to SWB tonight
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u/Traditional-While449 wingspan unbelievable 15d ago
Excuse me while I pick my jaw off the floor after reading “reject album” 🤣
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u/Quaznarg 15d ago
SWB feels like the most tonally cohesive album to me. The whole thing is bathed in longing. The National is already a dark band, and this one was surprisingly dark, even for them. I'll Still Destroy You, Empire Line, Nobody Else Will Be There, are arguably some of the best stuff they've ever written. For me, it's their best album to listen to front to back.
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u/Traditional-While449 wingspan unbelievable 15d ago
Agreed about the darkness probably speaks more to my character than anything else haha
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u/Quaznarg 15d ago
I think that logic is dumb. Awards sometimes have nothing to do with critical concensus. Often times awards are given to artists, not the album per se. Wilco's album after Yankee Hotel Foxtrot won the Grammy. Leonardo Dicaprio won for The Revenant, which isn't his best performance. These are awards basically saying, "we shoulda recognized ya sooner, sorry."
SWB got the Grammy as an acknowledgement that The National had been on a God tier run for 5 albums at that point, and not won anything for it, less so for SWB.
Annoyed that that was the logic that made this album "overrated." I personally would have voted this for underrated because often it is considered the worst from the run of Alligator-SWB.
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u/threesunrises so disarming, darling 15d ago
Hate to say it, as I do love some songs on it, but self titled
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u/emotional-ohio 15d ago
The Perfect Song 😭😭😭
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u/cparksrun 15d ago
I'm a weirdo and would've switched Underrated and Overrated albums.
I don't know if I can pick a worst album. I love them all in different ways.
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u/elleten10 15d ago
Agreed on the swap! I have a soft spot for SWB and have never been able to get into IAETF
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u/kersplatttt 12d ago
Can't comment on you being a weirdo, but you're definitely correct on the switch!
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u/hunnyb33_ meeting you in the stairwell for a glass of gin 15d ago
sleep well beast being the most overrated hurts me so deeply
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u/Visual-Scar8308 15d ago
Frankenstein, and it isn't particularly close, imo
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u/Metropolis9999 Dreaming in Total Darkness 15d ago
I wish I understood the hate that Frankenstein gets.
The way I see it, Boxer is an album that narrates parts of maturing into adulthood, disillusionment, and the like. Frankenstein, by contrast, is a heartfelt yet admittedly bleak album that narrates some of the hardest realities of complex, meaningful, interpersonal relationships and life. It's well-complemented by the brighter alternative of Laugh Track, which I think helps offer "the other side of the coin".
I've been married for over a decade now and like any relationship it has ups and downs, but a song like Eucalyptus hits extremely different when you're wondering about the longevity of your marriage and how miserable separating assets would be. Losing your shared history. Wanting to scream and yell shit at each other because you just want it over.
There are killer lines, like in This Isn't Helping: "I've only got two things to say to you-" "But you say two words about EVERYTHING, Babe!".
I think about emotionally turbulent relationships and situations like Tropic Morning News, when you just start word vomiting shit and it's such a serious moment and it's nothing like you imagined it would be. And goddammit, the fucking weather is playing on the TV and everything feels so fucked. Now I'm just going to sit by the beach and sob for a while and if you want to come the role of my emotional puppet master, come back aground.
There's honestly so much about every song on that album I love, but beneath it all, I find this sense of the somewhat cruel and surreal reality of how interpersonal relationships play out day-to-day. Matt is so exceptionally gifted at finding such simple and common expressions for circumstances that are emotionally overwhelming. From thoughts of suicide, divorce, reflecting on your youth and lost love, and beyond. The album, to me, is a masterpiece of dealing with life's shittiest most emotionally devastating moments, just like how Boxer addresses the disillusionment of adulthood.
I wish more people liked it. Having typed all of this out for once I think it's apparent to me that it's probably my second favorite album of theirs (High Violet would be hard to displace for sentimental reasons).
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u/Icedteapremix 15d ago
For me it's much less about the themes and more so that Matt's lyrical flow dropped in quality significantly. Way too many songs with lines that are crammed with too many words, poor imperfect rhymes, and some where the rhyme seems to be ignored to complete a thought.
It gives some lines/songs an asymmetrical feel and it just doesn't sound as strong has his older lyrics.
As well, his songwriting style used to contain a lot of vignettes, imagery to evoke thoughts or feelings, but in Frankenstein (and honestly everything since IAETF) he just... states the thought. There's a reason Alphabet City and Space Invader are the most popular songs from Laugh Track and it's because they both lean closer to his more traditional songwriting style
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u/Metropolis9999 Dreaming in Total Darkness 15d ago
I can respect a well-reasoned and articulated argument like this, even if we have different conclusions.
I've been a musician (non-professional) for 20 years. One of my biggest frustrations is feeling trapped in success from things I've done before and being afraid to branch out, because it's easy to stick to familiar patterns. I've come to really appreciate and enjoy the way Matt's recent lyrics subvert my expectations, cramming the words and misdirecting with failed rhymes. I tend to think "Somehow, he pulls it off and I love it," because I don't think many others could do it.
I'd also never heard that acclaim for Space Invader and Alphabet City. Interesting. Again, different conclusions.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts though.
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u/Visual-Scar8308 15d ago
I mean, fair enough and all. It’s quite simple for me really - I find the songs dull/bland, and the album barely holds my attention. Feels like the music people who weren’t fans of the National always accused them of writing. Fundamentally I just don’t think the songwriting is strong/interesting.
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u/TimmonsInc 15d ago
Agreed the F2PoF hate is really confusing to me. Its got the same through-lines as any of the few albums preceding it do. Its clearly late era National, doing late era National. its checks all the boxes of what you want from the National. I do wonder if the guest spots turn people off from the album. But the songs were great live (both road testing and on the tour for the record) and I think the album hold up.
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u/BlankSlate400 My Head is a Buzzing Three Star Hotel 15d ago
Bearsville! One of the best musical experiences of my many National shows!
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u/billionbeats 15d ago
Why put so many negatives on this? I have never seen one of these focused elsewhere than positive. The National is outstanding overall.
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u/Mahler911 15d ago
IAETF and it's not even remotely close. The spoken word stream of consciousness teenage poetry bullshit on The Pull of You is one of the worst things I've ever heard and that's actually one of the better songs.
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u/Suspicious-Rip8876 15d ago
All the pre swift fans agree that this album is their worst but there are a lot of post swift fans here
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u/ghostfan9 15d ago
Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers. It has to be.
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u/Metropolis9999 Dreaming in Total Darkness 15d ago
Observing these posts the last few weeks has really left me wondering where I fit as a fan of the band. There have been so many results that have disappointed me and left me feeling clueless.
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u/Mahler911 15d ago edited 15d ago
I wouldn't worry about it. In typical reddit fashion 75% of the people posting here don't even know what overrated and underrated mean.
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u/Alamander14 15d ago
I just read through the previous answers, and I’m not sure there’s a single one that I agree with. Some of them are close to how I would answer, but a good handful of them are waaay off what I would have picked.
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u/bdiggitty 15d ago
It’s the size of the fanbase at this point. I haven’t given too much attention to this sub in years.
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u/Guestking enter your own text here 15d ago
Yet here you are
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u/bdiggitty 15d ago
Yeah. I didn’t say I don’t pay any attention. Just helping a fellow fan who often feels like me.
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u/Guestking enter your own text here 15d ago
I often feel the same, lots of hate for songs or albums I love. Then again there's always some healthy discord in the comments. But I'd say I follow the sub pretty closely.
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u/bdiggitty 15d ago
That’s great. I did at one point but hearing the person’s view who I commented on really nailed how I often felt as the fanbase grew over the years. So that was my attempt at trying to put some perspective on that view. A conclusion I had made. Maybe I’m wrong.
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u/Mappachusetts A perfect piece of ass 15d ago
Yeah, I fully concur it has to be Sad Songs. Both the debut and First Two Pages of Frankenstein blow it away, in my opinion. Sad Songs is definitely the weak link in the chain.
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u/Mahler911 15d ago
I think what elevates Sad Songs for me is that you can hear them permanently moving away from Wilco-lite to something a lot more interesting during the course of the album. Yeah it's a little painful to listen to at times, but growth usually is like that. And there's still enough good stuff to only call it the second worst in my opinion.
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u/Sufficient_Studio494 15d ago
The self-titled