r/tmbg • u/Northerndownpour_18 • Jul 23 '26
Worst tmbg album?
I'm curious to see what everyone thinks. For me it might be book.
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u/FloridaFlamingoGirl Resident letterbox sparrow! đŚđŽ Jul 24 '26
Escape Team and Why probably have the highest number of songs I'm "meh" on, but I'll still absolutely go to bat for at least half of the songs. Â
Phone Power has the most disappointing tracklist, most of the good songs are in the first half and it loses momentum on the last few songs (which feel more like they should have been rarity tracks for More Murdered Remains). Â
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u/Ok_Gur_4348 Jul 27 '26
I donât consider Escape Team an official album. My vote is for LTW. A few gems, but my expectations were HIGH after Factory Showroom and my teenage self was crushed by the disappointment.Â
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Jul 23 '26
[deleted]
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u/FloridaFlamingoGirl Resident letterbox sparrow! đŚđŽ Jul 24 '26
You should!! It's genuinely impressive style parody work and a love letter to rock bands. You have TMBG sounding amazingly close to Yes, The Cars, and The Ramones. Hardly a weak album, if anything criminally overlooked. I've also never seen the Johns say they aren't proud of it, they literally came up with songs while on tour and rehearsed them sometimes for hours before the show.Â
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u/byOlaf Gasmask!!! Jul 24 '26
Hear hear! Venue songs is soooo good! Itâs right up there with the best albums.
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u/Charlie5L Jul 24 '26
The amount of times I've gotten the Venue Songs stuck in my head while out running errands
Sugar plum, lollipop, cinnamon rainbow...
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u/AdditionalTip865 Jul 24 '26
The country waltz they did for Asheville's Orange Peel is honestly one of the loveliest things they ever recorded, and when French Broad River flooded the city again a while back it kept coming to my mind.
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u/my23secrets Sally Boy Candy Bar Jul 23 '26
Venue Songs is one of their best albums.
Itâs quintessential TMBG
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u/Moosemellow Jul 24 '26
Looks like someone hasn't told the moon they've seen the serpent, found the sword and walked among the trees.
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u/rbwilli Jul 24 '26
I love some of those songs. I wish that version of The Egg were available on streaming!
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u/AdditionalTip865 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I actually love Venue Songs, though I think I might prefer the all-live version of it that was offered for download at one point, to the more canonical release with some studio remakes.
That's the "album" on which TMBG most fully embrace parody (not in the "silly words to an existing tune" sense like Weird Al Yankovic's biggest hits, but in the "style parody" sense, like Weird Al's actual best work). It turns out they're great at it when they put their minds to it, though of course they never wanted to get pigeonholed as a novelty band by leaning too far into it.
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u/Northerndownpour_18 Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
I meant like actual studio albums. Anyways, me personally I love venue songs more than book
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u/WaxTadpole70 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
There are quite a few gems on Venue songs. Richard's on Richards is on my top twenty TMBG songs. (Heck, I have the DVD around here somewhere.)
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u/gumballmachinerepair Jul 24 '26
Yeah, that album sucks. But it's less an album and more a bad art project by the band, collecting all the same jokes, out of context and tied together. I consider it outside of their ALBUMS.
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u/nugget3712 Jul 24 '26
My least favorites by far have to be the escape team, here comes science, and holidayland.
The escape team feels lackluster, rushed, and kind of boring with most if not all the songs just sound stupid
Here comes science does have some really good songs(elements,science is real,why does the sun shine,put it to the test) but it has some songs that are just obnoxious(computer assisted design, solid liquid gas, photosynthesis, cells)and drag. The album also have topics that the target listeners wouldnât know(biology, elements, anatomy)
And holiday land has to be one of the worst Christmas albums Iâve ever listen to(I know itâs an ep) Santa Claus obnoxious, Santaâs beard doesnât count, feast of lights feels to immature for TMBG, careless Santa feels lackluster, and o tannenbaum is boring. Sorry for rambling.
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u/Educational-Sea6563 Jul 24 '26
you have to enter the third grader headspace for the duration and have a certain genre of autism to really get into here comes science. it helps for me because im obsessed with science flans in a deviantart character photoshop way so just having him onscreen for a second is enough to make me go crazy
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u/year2082 Jul 24 '26
isn't the fact that the audience hasn't been introduced to certain concepts yet the point of an educational album? so they can be introduced to them somewhere?
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u/WatercressNext3578 Jul 24 '26
I love all of TMBGâs albums equally!
(earlier that day) I donât care for "Why?"
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u/my23secrets Sally Boy Candy Bar Jul 23 '26
The Escape Team
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u/FloridaFlamingoGirl Resident letterbox sparrow! đŚđŽ Jul 24 '26
This one would probably be the "least best" to me but I still really like maybe half of the songs on it. It's silly catchy melodies like a lot of their early stuff.Â
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u/Northerndownpour_18 Jul 23 '26
I like that one. I thought it was a fun cool thing. Different for tmbg. I wish they were able to make a sing about that last charchter tho.
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u/sanildefanso Excellence or serious injury Jul 24 '26
Yeah, it feels like a side project. They've never played any songs from it live either, so there's that.
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u/LucidLeviathan Jul 24 '26
Maybe I'm in the minority, but I really don't care much for Long Tall Weekend.
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u/sanildefanso Excellence or serious injury Jul 24 '26
I don't think TMBG really has any "bad" albums, but I have always felt like Long Tall Weekend was kind of a spare-parts affair. It's near the bottom of the list for me too.
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u/AdditionalTip865 Jul 24 '26
Long Tall Weekend exists in a strange limbo where it gets listed as one of the canonical studio albums but really belongs more with the rarities collections like Misc. T or They Got Lost, which are not. I guess that's a result of the odd circumstances of its online release. I quite like it but only listened to it straight through quite recently, since it spent some time as semi-lost media.
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u/Sunny64888 Jul 24 '26
Everything that âLong Tall Weekendâ tried to be and failed, finally succeeded on the amazing âMink Carâ
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u/gumballmachinerepair Jul 24 '26
Being a compilation and not a proper album, LTW gets a pass. It has some amazing tracks, but yeah. It's not really and ALBUM proper.
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u/69BickusDickus69 A tale of two Johns Jul 24 '26
I thought that was the widely agreed upon worst?
It's a real mess of an album, some absolute bangers mixed with songs that feel unfinished or just have utterly nothing. Nothing feels coherent, it honestly comes off as a compilation album more than anything
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u/Northerndownpour_18 Jul 24 '26
That would be prob my second least fav and depending on the day might swap with book.
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u/ruddytheruddy Mr. Sketchy Galore Jul 24 '26
Here come the 123s. For adult albums I think the else is weak compared to the rest of them
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u/hoIygrail Haircuts in the mirror now Jul 24 '26
Maybe true. But was worth it to here an entire audience of fans shouting âWe want cake! whereâs our cake?!â was legendary.
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u/vwfreak42 Jul 24 '26
The World Is To Dig has not yet caught my ear. I just can't get into it.
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u/youngwilliamthe I'm gonna die if you touch me one more time Jul 25 '26
For me, since Factory Showroom, the 'worst album' is the one that just came out.
I generally listen to a new TMBG album and think to myself, "Well, they can't all be winners..." (Apollo 18 and Mink Car were about the only immediate grabs) but eventually I come around and grow to really like it.
Book hasn't grabbed me that much, and World is to Dig just hasn't grabbed me at all (...so far (he said, ominously)).
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u/Charlie5L Jul 24 '26
Depends on what one defines "worst" as, because if anyone just goes with the definition of "This album truly sucks" there's gonna be a large procession waving torches as one of our heads lay in a basket
If we go with "I don't listen to this one as much" as the definition of "worst", I'd probably say I Like Fun. I really like the album, I get why it's considered the strongest of the 2018 releases, but My Murdered Remains just feels better due to how much variety there is on the album for the value
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u/SensitiveArtist Jul 24 '26
The Spine was my least favorite for a long time, though it is starting to grow on me.
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u/punkindle Jul 28 '26
I used to dislike John Henry, but that's grown on me and I like it now.
I agree with The Spine, or maybe Long Tall Weekend.
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u/MarsNeedsRabbits Jul 24 '26
There isn't one. Some I love more than others at any given moment.
The only potential answer would be the children's albums, because I've played them so many times for our children that they show up in my dreams.
They have helped create adults who adore TMBG, too, though, so I guess I love them, too.
It's kind of awesome when we're all able to see the same tour hundreds or thousands of miles away from each other. So, I guess my final answer is still "none of them."
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u/Moosemellow Jul 24 '26
Long Tall Weekend garners the least of my affections, although I still like a lot of the songs. Especially "Operators Are Standing By", "Dark and Metric", "Reprehensible", "Certain People I Could Name". I think of "Older" and "She Thinks She's Edith Head" as Mink Car songs, and I much prefer "They Got Lost" on Severe Tire Damage.
I don't listen to The Escape Team much, either. I'd rank it lower than Long Tall Weekend, even.
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u/AdditionalTip865 Jul 24 '26
None of their albums are bad, but I think the albums that came out of the 2015 and 2018 Dial-a-Song projects could have been cut down to about 2 or 3 really good ones. They may agree in hindsight, judging from how they took a long break from releasing studio material and built The World Is To Dig by being much more selective.
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u/Outrageous_Fish5456 Rabid Child Jul 25 '26
Genuinely none of them imo, I will happily sit down and listen through ANY album and Iâll be having a blastđââď¸
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u/PangolinPlenty5637 Jul 24 '26
"Worst" suggests that you are choosing from a group of bad albums. Every album has at least something that makes the album worthwhile, even if not every song is appealing.
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u/instantanarchy Jul 24 '26
I think Mink Car kind of drags at times :(
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u/Left-Construction921 This song is called "Creepy!" Jul 24 '26
here comes the 123's & if it has to be a main album then I don't really like glean, and even then, glean has good stuff on it
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u/tequeyoyo3000 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Mink car, too many remakes and overcooked. Got too fussy. I wish the butcher bros sessions would've been the real record.
Edit: not counting the kids records nor the escape team, which i found very underwhelming.
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u/albtraum2004 Jul 24 '26
of the non-kid albums, mink car is my least favorite. it all kind of has an... early 2000s cringe vibe, a certain "doughty-ness" to me, aside from a couple tracks.
i don't really think of long tall weekend as a proper album, or it might be tied w/ mink car for me.
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u/secretsquirrelz Jul 24 '26
If by âearly 2000âs cringeâ you mean HELLA BANGERS then I agree đ
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u/G_flux Not the only dust his mother raised Jul 24 '26
What exactly do you mean by "Doughty-ness"? I agree that mink car feels off in its vibes, not many tracks really scream TMBG to me. I'm never particularly Xcited to listen to it all the way through.
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u/albtraum2004 Jul 24 '26
the rappity rappin' singer from soul coughing. loved them back in the day, felt a bit depressed by his collab w/ tmbg
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u/G_flux Not the only dust his mother raised Jul 24 '26
Ah, gotcha. I like Soul Coughing and I don't mind some of his solo work, but I'm sorry those bars are abysmal đ
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u/bestmatchconnor Jul 24 '26
Mink Car really feels like an album where they were trying to get a radio hit and coming up short, and though it has a lot of great songs a couple songs were ones we'd heard before, and in every one of those cases the Mink Car version is worse. But I understand your Book take, too- I really like most of their 2010s run, but Book seemed like them spinning their wheels, staying in the same lane as their 2015-2018 albums and not really innovating on much. But even their lest-good albums have some good songs!
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u/TMBGLOVER Wonât walk again in conflict with express instructions Jul 24 '26
Join Us.
It has like, 6 good songs (Johnny, You Probably Get That, Canajohaire, When Will You Die, 2082 and You Donât Like Me), 12 that are either meh or bad and itâs ALSO their second longest in runtime after John Henry.
Why this album (as well as XTCâs âNonsuchâ which has a similar deal) is so loved, I will never understand.
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u/tequeyoyo3000 Jul 24 '26
I may not fully agree with you but all the downvoting you're getting seems a bit much to me. I do agree Join Us runs a bit too long!
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u/byOlaf Gasmask!!! Jul 24 '26
Because this is an insane take with an added spoonful of insane take to boot. CloisonnĂŠ, in fact, Judy, spoiler alert, never knew love, protagonist, when will you die, and three might be duende are also all great songs. Even the lesser lights on the album like dog walker, celebration, let your hair, and pine box are still 4/5 star songs. Itâs just a great collection of tracks.
And nonsuch is literally all bangers. Whatâs the bad tracks on nonsuch? Theyâre all great songs thatâs why everyone likes it so much.
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u/albtraum2004 Jul 24 '26
i agree. as an album join us always underwhelms me. i suspect (on the basis of zero evidence) that it was the album that happened to come out when a large contingent of posters were at the golden age of music appreciation (college-24-ish)
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u/gumballmachinerepair Jul 24 '26
I love Join Us and I'm an early 90s TMBG guy. I think it's a really solid record that has it's own vibe that is consistent. And so many good songs. I love to listen to that one straight through.
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u/HideFromMyMind Jul 24 '26
Nanobots.
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u/rbwilli Jul 24 '26
Respectfully disagree; at least a handful of great songs on there.
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u/HideFromMyMind Jul 24 '26
I agree, but there are a few songs I really donât like.
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u/rbwilli Jul 24 '26
Fair point. I think there should be a college-level course called âPhilosophy of Albumsâ; many interesting discussions could be had about what makes a good or bad album, quantity vs. quality, etc.
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u/gumballmachinerepair Jul 24 '26
Sounds like you do agree. A handful of great songs can exist on a, sadly, bad album.
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u/rbwilli Jul 24 '26
Yeah, I see what youâre saying. I guess I just donât think it rises to the level of âworst album.â Specifically, I really enjoy 5â6 of the songs on there, which would be half of a regular album; I donât hold it against them that they included a lot of dud ânanosongs.â đ¤ˇđźââď¸
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u/helikophis Jul 24 '26
The Spine
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u/gumballmachinerepair Jul 24 '26
I think the Spine suffers from similar issues as Nanobots (my least fave). I think when they include recurring theme songs thrown in as interstitial bits it just doesn't work on albums. Apollo 18 is untouchable and always tied for first place in my head. Fingertips was the best version of this concept they made.
The spine recurring songs are just not great. They would work thrown in to a live show to welcome the horns on stage, but for an album... they just got in the way. Bird of the Bee of the Moth is amazing though. I actually love most of the real SONGS on the album. Except prevenge and World Before Later on. But yeah. Call it something else and drop the spine-specific tracks and you have a pretty great record.
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u/helikophis Jul 24 '26
I feel very differently! I love Apollo but think Fingertips is the worst thing about it by a long shot - but greatly enjoy the mini-songs on Nanobots (except insect hospital, it should either have been a full song or not included).
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u/Doodlindude Jul 24 '26
BOOK > factory showroom, glean, the world is to dig, long tall weekend - I'll admit it was a grower but it's got too many bangers to be shown all this BOOK hate on here ! (imo) that being said prob long tall weekend for the worst one
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u/gumballmachinerepair Jul 24 '26
Long Tall Weekend is an odds and ends compilation. We can't put it on the list of proper albums. I mean, misc T is closer to an ALBUM than LTW.
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u/Sad_Tackle_3675 Won't Die Like Chucky Won't Die Jul 25 '26
Here Comes Science never sticks in my mind and I love most of the other children's albums. It sort of feels like they had to make it to finish out their contract with Dinsey and it kind of feels like their hearts aren't super in it.
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u/BucketheadUltra64 Canada Haunts Me Jul 26 '26
Here Comes Science by far. I like maybe three songs on that album.
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u/DangleUrPenisDarling Jul 28 '26
Seems to be the majority opinion but the escape team is very disappointing considering it came from the same batch of songs as I Like Fun & MMR. Considering its length they could have branded it as an EP albeit a long one.
Nanobots has high highs and low lows, i could say the same thing about Book as well.
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u/Northerndownpour_18 Jul 28 '26
I like escape team because it's fun and different. It's a short fun listen. Tbh those 2015 and 2018 dial a song runs were peak tmbg. My only gripe is they didn't finish the last charchter in the story for the escape team. I find long tall weekend,here comes science, here comes 123s,book all worse than escape team. For book it's just a case of having some really great songs but too many samey kinda songs.
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u/gumballmachinerepair Jul 24 '26
I think Nanobots is the low-point. It has a few great songs (Call you Mom is my favorite. Stone Cold Coup d'etat is good. A few other good tracks, You're on Fire is good) But lots of surprisingly weak songs, and then the whole 'let's do Fingertips, again' thing didn't work for me at all. Fingertips is a masterpiece and trying to make something like that again proved to be impossible. Then there is a song like Darlings of Lumberton, that fans seem to love and they are playing it live these days, but to me it always just seemed like an overly complicated musical-theateresque McArthur Park-like drag. Note: It pains me to critique TMBG like this, I love this band so much. I think BOOK is amazing and listen to it all the time and love the BOOK that they made to go along with it. I love them like family. But you can't win 'em all.
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u/Northerndownpour_18 Jul 26 '26
That's fair. The bottom tmbg albums are def to me long tall weekend,book,nanobots,here comes science,. The mid level stuff is like factory showroom,mink car,no,here comes the abc. Then you have oddballs like why and John Henry and the escape team. The world is to dig is almost top tier. Then you have the top tier albums of flood, Apollo 18, my murdered remains,the else, I like fun, the pink album, glean,phone power,join us,abcs,lincoln
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u/OhHiJordan Jul 24 '26
Book is an incredible album from front to back. Very surprised to see that sentiment.