The Worst Albums of 1979

Elton John : Victim of Love

[Purchase]

Victim of Love, Elton John's disco album, is the runaway winner as the worst album of 1979. In year two of his retirement from performing and writing songs with Bernie Taupin, a coked-up Elton John let disco producer Peter Bellotte handle the songwriting and the sessions. Elton didn't even play any of the instrumentation. 

The reviews were harsh including this one in Rolling Stone.

In his very enjoyable memoir Me, which I'm currently reading , Elton concedes he made the album to fulfill an obligation to his American label:

Not everything on Victim of Love was terrible--if the title track had come on at Studio 54, I'd have danced to it--but making an album in bad faith like that is never a good idea. No matter how you do it, it somehow gets into the music: you can just tell it's not coming from an honest place.

OTHER MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENTS:

Beach Boys : Here Comes the Night

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The Beach Boys flirted with disco on L.A. (Light Album),  their first album for CBS Records. Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh called it "worse than awful. It is irrelevant".  

Aretha Franklin :  Ladies Only

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In which the Queen of Soul gets blind-sided by the lights of the disco club. (Note the trend here?) Produced by Van McCoy, La Diva is the lowest charting and poorest selling album of Aretha's entire Atlantic Records catalogue.

Zon : Circus

[Purchase]

Alright here's an album that doesn't involve a well known band trying to make a disco record one year late. The Canadian rock group Zon was too busy trying to sounds like a mediocre version of Styx. So you can imagine...

Neil Diamond : I'm a Believer

[Purchase]

Tossed in this particular bin because of the reggae version of "I'm a Believer". Sacrilege! 

The Alan Parson Project : Damned If I Do

[Purchase]

I was a big fan of I Robot but Eve is horrible. Robert Christgau gave the album a grade of D writing: 

Musically, this is a step toward schlock that knows its name--a few smarmy melodies mixed in with the production values and synthesizer furbelows. Thematically, it's both sophomoric and disgusting--programmatic misogyny rooted in sexual rejections that were clearly deserved. Visually, it's sadistic--the three women on the Hipgnosis cover wear black veils that only partly conceal their scars, warts and blotches. What is it they stencil on street corners? Castrate art rockers?

More horrible disco albums:

Tina Turner's Love Explosion

Cher 's Take Me Home

And Various Artists Mickey Mouse Disco