For the Love of the Indefensible: The Conclusion

The conclusion of the challenge mentioned here.

This was actually kind of really a toughie, as — honestly — after plumbing the depths of decency with bands like The Meatmen, Happy Flowers & GG Allin & the Murder Junkies, where exactly does one go? Understand me, though — I do not object to tastelessness. I own several albums by bands like the Revolting Cocks, the Butthole Surfers, the Strangulated Beatoffs, the Crucifucks and, of course, Cop Shoot Cop. The puerile, the pugnacious and the potty-minded don’t really bother me. I feel my list more than compensated in that capacity. So, to fill this tenth slot, I really had to think. I went back to my racks of CD’s and crates of vinyl looking for something that was really, really indefensible in terms that stretched beyond the parameters of simply bad taste.

I thought about maybe going with Cut the Crap by the Clash, a record so reviled that revisionists have frequently moved to strike mention of it from career-spanning retrospectives. My single-sentence review of it for my college newspaper, at the time, was “After listening to Cut the Crap, I had to WIPE the crap off my stylus.” Oh mirth. But, no, I shan’t include it in this list of indefensible albums, as it still contains “This is England,” a track still truly worthy of the band.

I chose something much worse. Something a thousand times more objectionable, to my mind, than anything GG Allin might have pulled out of his … never mind.

For my tenth album I own but really should know better about, I’m going with A Beautiful World by Thicke. Prized off a discard pile in the hallways of TIME Magazine in the early-2000’s, I picked it up on the arguable strength of the video for “When I Get You Alone,” which found young Robin Thicke unconvincingly portraying a bike messenger on the streets of Manhattan (see below), and cooing lyrically-undercooked couplets in a Timberlake/Stevie Wonder-vocal pastiche over a repurposed “Fifth of Beethoven” by Walter Murphy. For whatever reason, the forced funkiness of same made some sort of impression on me, and I’ve had it ever since.

Of course, in more recent years, Thicke has devolved into more of an irretrievable cheese-monkey of the lowest order than could have ever been expected. Or maybe I should have expected it. But there you have it.

Pick 10 albums that are conceptually stupid, possibly offensive, ill-executed, irreparably dated and/or just plain ol' bad, but you just can't help digging them anyway, for whatever reason.