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Further discussion re: Sgt. Pepper

BLZ, thought it best to reply here and keep the RfC voting relatively free of clutter.

This is indeed fundamentally about Sgt. Pepper's inclusion, because it's such an extreme example of how a best/worst list can go off the rails. As archives 4, 5 and 6 show, the album's inclusion has dominated discussion here for months. If it were simply a claim or statement appearing in a genuine article on the encyclopedia, that level of complaint would have seen the contentious point removed, I'm convinced of it. The difference here is that the list seems to be saying, "No, it's okay, bring all your marginal/fringe theories on critical reception; justice is blind and we're robotic." Unlike some who have opposed its inclusion, perhaps, I've got no warm feelings towards the album at all, but I'm pretty knowledgeable about its impact and standing over the last five decades, and it's on that aspect I view its inclusion as indicative of how the foundation for this list is total mush. I started compiling a list of sources for "worst albums of all time"; there's a book co-authored by Rolling Stone contributor Jimmy Guterman that can be added to that, mentioned here, here and here. Maybe among those various sources there are some answers to the points you raise re other albums currently appearing in our list, I don't know.

A bit of context on the December 1998 Melody Maker poll, which is the sole reason for Sgt. Pepper being included in this list: The magazine was in desperate trouble by then, most of its decent staff had decamped to Uncut from 1997 onwards. Select had grabbed the rest of its target audience. The poll followed the enormously successful Beatles Anthology project and reverence afforded the Beatles by many of the leading Britpop acts, and it followed the height of Britpop and coincided with a general backlash against that movement, particularly Oasis, champions extraordinaire of all things Beatles. So, you've got a publication that, in its '90s incarnation, had positioned itself as dedicated to furthering indie and other new music but was fighting for life and relevance, mixed with a mood of exhaustion with both Britpop rhetoric and what was the (or one of the) most successful legacy-related campaigns in pop culture history.

In the list, Sgt. Pepper currently sits under the subheading "Backlash", which is a drastic improvement on how it appeared before – it was first up under "Albums", as the earliest release, thereby heightening the sense of what-the?! that, I imagine, informed many of the complaints here over the last year and the attempts to delete it from the list. Seems to me it's just a bandaid solution, though, and I'd understand it if editors were to object to the imposition of a Backlash category because it suggests subjective editorialisation and original research. Just as the introductory sentences under "Albums" are tagged as unsourced, this issue is symptomatic of how the list lacks the credibility and foundation that's evident from the start at List of films – ie, who says, who identifies, backlash as a factor in music considered the worst, explicitly? (Of course it is, but where has the subject "music considered the worst" received the level of attention in its own right that would allow for identifying such influences and characteristics? Nowhere, I think, other than Wikipedia pulling a page like this together.) Having said that, it would be a useful means to contextualise this and similar entries. With that in mind I included in my sources list the BBC 6 poll of overrated albums, which from memory includes Nirvana's Nevermind, the same Beatles album, Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Radiohead's OK Computer ... There's some overlap between that poll and the 2007 Guardian piece currently cited in our paragraph on Pepper. I mean, why exactly we include Billy Childish's comments from The Guardian I don't know – I find myself nodding in agreement with several points he makes, but he doesn't say a thing about Pepper being the worst album of all time ...

So: what are we doing – are we indulging in sideways editorialisation in this list? In which case, there's an argument for extending the backlash/overrated theme to include the other albums identified by BBC 6 and the Guardian contributors; an added benefit might be that Sgt. Pepper's inclusion becomes more credible. Or, if we're not, Pepper should logically return to its position at the top of "Albums", which would put it right back in the firing line for readers visiting the page for the first time. JG66 (talk) 11:27, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

@JG66: What I'm concerned about here is that the entry was added by block-evading sockpuppets of The abominable Wiki troll. Per evidence I had gathered, the IP address that re-added the entry back in September 2018 (WHOIS info here, edit here) and an IP address cited in an ANI discussion ("Community ban for User:The abominable Wiki troll"; WHOIS info here) share the same geolocation information - both are assigned to Sky UK broadband, based in the UK. Other IPs coming from there that have edited the page around the same time include 5.64.203.172 ([1]) and 5.71.120.78 ([2]). The entry was previously added back in 2014 by User:Trying to envelop, a blocked sockpuppet of User:The abominable Wiki troll, as shown here. Another blocked sockpuppet of The abominable Wiki troll, User:Goblinostic, defended the album's inclusion in the edit summary for this edit and in this talk page discussion. The relevant SPI case files are here and here. I am still trying to figure out if WP:DISPUTE trumps WP:DENY in this case - I opened an inquiry at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Content disputes and block evasion, but have only gotten one response so far; I am seeking the opinions of multiple admins and experienced editors. The Grand Delusion(Send a message) 23:32, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
The Grand Delusion, I don't doubt what you're saying for a minute, but as someone says at that VP(P) discussion you started, the point's somewhat moot because other editors can and do reinstate information added by sockpuppets. Way it goes, I guess. What I noticed years ago at the Pepper article (when I wasn't even aware of this list) was someone, or perhaps more than one editor, adding almost anything derisive they could find about the album, without any allowance for balance or the fact that, certainly in 2017, many more writers and critics were saying very positive things about Sgt. Pepper. JG66 (talk) 05:37, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
So are you saying that mostly everybody who agreed to keep Pepper on the list was the same troll with his Sockpuppets accounts, and one specific admin? Picture me surprised... WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 18:42, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
(Caveat: this is a response I wrote mostly earlier today, and I hadn't seen The Grand Delusion's message. I agree, of course, that we should monitor and address policy violations and manipulative behavior. That said, my focus is on content and reaching a constructive outcome that makes the most sense in light of policy and a coherent reading of reliable sources. At this stage I'd rather discuss the content on its own merits, taken separately from consideration of the user's actions, especially because JG66 and others have made excellent points that have made me begin to rethink my stance and to consider some new alternatives.)
JG66: A lot of what you've written above is along the lines of what's been on my mind. You're also dead-on in your reading of the Melody Maker poll and its likely motivations. My feeling is that those kind of historically contingent "events" in music criticism/journalism are interesting in their own right, though they shouldn't be mistaken with some kind of real, final determination of the actual "worst" music, as if such a thing is possible—and again, that's part of why the list isn't called "List of the worst music". Anyway: I don't outright dismiss the MM poll, I think it's still valid to some degree, but I think we're on the same page about the problematic aspects you brought up and those should be kept in mind and better contextualized. Also, just to declare my priors again since some editors have tended to read bad intentions into any position anyone takes: I don't hate Sgt. Pepper's, I think the Beatles overall were incredible; imo Sgt. Pepper's is very good but not quite capital-G "Great", maybe their fifth or sixth best effort.
Expanding the "backlash" section of this article would be necessary, at a minimum, to keeping Sgt. Pepper's on the list
Moving Sgt. P's to a dedicated "backlash" section was a good idea, but now it sticks out like a sore thumb in a different way—it's conspicuously the only member of that section. I agree that, at a minimum, it can't continue to be the only one there if it stays.
Off the bat, some other candidates for inclusion in that section are Be Here Now and Saturday Night Fever. The latter is a good example of how culturally and historically conditioned "backlash" to "music" can be (i.e., the backlash to disco was at least as much about bigotry as it was about the music itself). Conversely, Be Here Now is probably the best example of genuine consensus whiplash: it wasn't just a small but vocal contingent of listeners/critics who turned on it, but rather the entire consensus view reversed from "one of the greatest of all time" to "bland/overblown at best, awful at worst".
The catch is that "most overrated" is not necessarily the same as "worst"—"most overrated album of all time" can mean critics/listeners hyped an album way out of proportion to its merits, but that all the while the album itself is fundamentally decent or middling, maybe not actually outright bad. Still, I think this is a compromise direction that could be productive. There's no doubt that if Sgt. Pepper's does stay on this list, it can't remain the only entry in its category.
Deeper problems with different, irreconcilable meanings of "the worst"
But—and I say this as someone who's defended Sgt. P's placement on this listed up til now—there's definitely some major tension between definitions of "worst". Or to entangle it a little further, since "worst" just means "most bad", it's different definitions of "bad" that are most at issue.
Clearly, the kind of "badness" that unites the Shaggs, Attila, Elvis Presley's worst shit, etc. is something like "ineptness", "cluelessness", "reckless disregard for the audience". Other adjectives could be used, but you get the gist. (Totally irrelevant sidebar: I would assign Metal Machine Music to the last of those three, but not the first two—I promise I'm not being a facile ironist, though I know what you mean about the kind of smug superior shithead who decides something like that is "actually good" and "you just don't get it", which is grating beyond belief).
On the other hand, the type of "badness" that (purportedly) afflicts Sgt. Pepper's is not ineptness or reckless disregard for the audience. Maybe cluelessness, but a very different cluelessness than the Shaggs. No one could credibly say that it's not a well-composed, layered, dazzlingly artful musical effort–it's just that they hate it for those very reasons. One man's treasure is another man's trash. "It's fancy bullshit," "it's fakery," "it took rock music in the wrong direction," etc. These are legitimate viewpoints, but they're very different types of viewpoints than the ones that say the Shaggs et al are "the worst". At the core of what's fueling these talk page debates, I think, is a fundamental disagreement about whether we can plausibly house these very different meanings of "worst" under the same roof without misunderstanding.
My preferred solution— A dedicated "backlash" subsection at Sgt. Pepper's would be better, more informative, and more nuanced. Far more critics have claimed Sgt. Pepper's is really bad than have claimed it's The Worst.
I think it may be better to incorporate the "worst" entry for Sgt. Pepper's into the actual Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band article, as a subsection on critical/cultural backlash to the album. Hear me out, because with your Beatles background knowledge and experience writing Beatles stuff on here, I think you're probably the ideal person to help make this compromise work. The "Retrospective appraisal" section sort of gestures weakly at the backlash without diving into the backlash's substance. It doesn't quite give a fair hearing to the critical opposition to Sgt. Pepper's, it takes a few strongly anti-Pepper sentiments and sprinkles them throughout. It would probably make more sense to have a consolidated, focused subsection on the backlash. It would make sense, because whatever one thinks about it personally, there's no denying Sgt. Pepper's is the only Beatles album with such targeted disdain—other Beatles backlash tends to target the band as a whole, rather than an individual work of theirs.
Most importantly, this solution would also allow the integration of criticism that doesn't go as far saying Sgt. Pepper's is the Transcendental Signifier "The Worst", but that does say it's terrible or overrated in other ways. A lot of these anti-Pepper's sources are actually far more interesting (because more nuanced) than the cherrypicked subset that happen to invoke the magic phrase "The Worst". This would include the Billy Childish comment in The Guardian, which is very useful as a comment on the album taken at face value but is, admittedly, an edge case for saying it's been called "the worst". For example:
List of useful "Sgt. Pepper's backlash" sources
  • "It sucks dogs royally", opines leading American music journalist Jim DeRogatis. It's actually incredible how negative his review gets without saying "the worst" or anything equivalent, and it's certainly a far more devastating treatment of the album than some of the currently cited sources calling it "the worst". Another illuminating way it differs from what's cited in this list: DeRogatis says Sgt. Pepper's tries, and fails, to be a great work of art—he cites seven other late-60s albums he holds superior—whereas most of these "The Worst" sources implicitly reject the idea of Great Works of Art as such.
  • From DeRogatis's Kalidoscope Eyes (perhaps an ironic title, though later republished as Turn On Your Mind), we have Julian Cope at p. 16: "There's no denying that the genre [psychedelic rock] has resulted in some pointless indulgence. 'Sgt. Pepper's was the thing that did it, psychedelic punk Julian Cope said. 'That was the kiss of death, with people taking themselves way too seriously. I could sit down and say, 'Look, man, you've got to understand where I'm coming from, 'cause it's deadly important!' But the greatest artists have to accept that it has to be top entertainment. There's got to be that side to it, otherwise it's not rock 'n' roll." DeRogatis is otherwise agnostic about Sgt. Pepper's elsewhere in the book.
  • From The New Yorker: "But the most prescient criticism came from the British critic Nik Cohn, who agreed that Sgt. Pepper 'was genuinely a breakthrough,' but complained that 'it wasn’t much like pop. It wasn't fast, flash, sexual, loud, vulgar, monstrous, or violent.' Cohn's words presaged the rise of punk, which emerged, a decade later, as a corrective to the rock-as-art pretensions that Sgt. Pepper represented. 'The Beatles make good music, they really do,' Cohn concluded, 'but since when was pop anything to do with good music?'" — Not only does this cite a contemporaneous source that is currently missing from the Sgt. P's article, it also gets at the thing about why "bad" doesn't just have to mean "inept".
  • "Rubbish", says no less than Keith Richards. (Taking the opportunity to trash his own band's Sgt. Pepper's-inspired Their Satanic Majesties Request, too, but there's no mistaking this as a diss directed at the latter-day Beatles and Sgt. Pepper's in particular.)
  • Aimee Mann got a whole op-ed in The New York Times to criticize Sgt. Pepper's circa its 40th anniversary. This is certainly the best example of a nuanced anti-Pepper's take from a musician, since the over-arching reason she's over the album is that she (and the culture) have so thoroughly digested it that it has nothing left to offer her, and seems flatter than some of the later music inspired by it.
  • Written shortly after Aimme Mann: David Browne on Sgt. Pepper's backlash (and generalized Beatles backlash) in The New Republic
  • Two Slate articles (one by Jody Rosen, another by Simon Reynolds) alluding to Revolver's slow-but-steady ascendance as the critically favored apex Beatles album.
  • Can't find it now but I swear I found another source yesterday suggesting Sgt. Pepper's was always put on a higher pedestal and seen as uniquely important much more in the US than in the UK, where (especially after punk) listeners were more readily wary of it. It may be buried in something else I've already shared here, but I think it was from JSTOR.
Let me know what you think. These two ideas aren't incompatible: we could conceivably add more entries to the "backlash" section of this list and develop a "backlash" section of Sgt. Pepper's itself.
P.S.: The Guterman/O'Donnell book is available to borrow from Archive.org here or here. I feel like it's underused compared to, say, Google Books because the book text isn't searchable directly from a search engine, but Archive.org itself lets you text search everything in their database. If you haven't used the Internet Archive library yet, I strongly recommend it. Works the same as a real library, you just need an account to check a book out and if someone else has checked a book out you can't have it until their loan ends. The same two authors also did a book of bests. —BLZ · talk 03:17, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
A lot to digest there ... Working backwards (sort of), the hidden portion containing Pepper backlash sources is just that – hidden, nonexistent – it's only after opening the edit window that any content appears. That's how it is for me, at least. [...]
(Editor's note: fixed. I goofed the template.) —BLZ · talk 19:59, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
[...] You seem to be saying that because Cohn's comments don't appear in the Pepper article, it's a notable omission(?). Despite how Jonathan Gould presents them in the New Yorker piece, and in his book Can't Buy Me Love also, Cohn's words are from his 1969 book Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom (and/or Pop from the Beginning, not sure). Cohn's views are notable, and notably contrary [see the same ext link] – but those were not from a contemporary review of the album, if that's what you meant. Jim DeRogatis' view of Pepper is well-known, and it's mirrored in and it informs his clear love of Revolver (love one to spite the other, and vice versa). I didn't include much in the way of commentary, let alone personal opinion, from DeRogatis at Revolver and neither at Sgt. Pepper – simple reason being that there are dozens of similarly notable assessments for both albums and there's simply not room for it all. In the same way, with regard to Childish's and Richards' opinions, it's difficult to justify their inclusion when hundreds of laudatory opinions from musicians have no presence either in these Beatles album articles. I am thinking of adding a quote from John Sebastian or Brian Wilson at Pepper, and mention of Dylan's dismissal of that album, because those views seem especially pertinent to its initial impact. (I can't emphasise enough how much commentary there is out there on the Beatles; as June Skinner Sawyers wrote in her role as editor of the 2006 Penguin book of essays Reading the Beatles: "[Sgt. Pepper] has been called the most famous album in the history of popular music. It is certainly among the most written about. It is still being written about.")
As far as including a Backlash section in the album article, I think the first thing is to carry out the restructure I mentioned on the talk page and in a couple of comments with my edits (sort of notes-to-self at the time). So much among the retrospective assessments is informed by the album's impact with regard to development of rock music, cultural legitimacy of the genre, representation of the counterculture and Summer of Love, popularity of concept albums and studio creations, etc, so it's only logical to move most of that text forward. Other thing to mention is that an album's critical reception section should reflect the reviewer ratings for the most part – try as I have, I just can't find a professional review of Pepper that gives anything below the equivalent of 4 out of 5. Tempted to go on here, but it's probably best we continue this over at Talk:Sgt Pepper. Happy to ping you when I return to the album article, soon I hope.
I'm in total agreement with much of what you say regarding this list. I appreciate your ability to view the potential of an article as being this wide, and there are certainly categories of "worst". Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and Elvis' Having Fun have a reputation for being utterly dire; one would expect to see them in a "worst albums" list, just as Ishtar and Heaven's Gate would be in most worst-films lists. Oasis' Be Here Now is a perfect example of a severe backlash-type "worst" album. The Pepper backlash is different, though, because the album was so culturally important it was ultimately blamed for the very things for which it was originally lauded.
But again, none of this is relevant to a list on Wikipedia until reliable sources give the subject a conceptual framework, right? Unfortunately. I say that because you do make it sound interesting and a subject worth pursuing. (Can you get on to PopMatters or something better, and get them to publish your views on this ...? No, seriously!) Because, without some sort of coverage of what constitutes "worst music", we're still at that WP:LISTN violation issue raised by A Quest For Knowledge back in March, as far as I'm concerned. JG66 (talk) 17:36, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
Agreed with most of what's being said here. My proposal of actions:
1. Establish a new inclusion criteria for this article. This should have been fixed years ago. If you haven't voted, please vote now.
2. Remove the "backlash" section of the article. If there's such a section, many other albums should be there. But this is a list of music considered the worst - it's not an article about music considered the best with some backlash. That's why I said that that section has no room in this article, with its current title.
3. Since criticism of Pepper existed at some point, pass some of it to its main article. Perhaps a section of "Criticism" under its "Retrospective appraisal" section (note: that section was called "Retrospective criticism" years ago, and it was full of negative bias against Pepper. You can guess which user with some Sockpuppets were responsible for it.)
Those are my thoughts. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 18:45, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
JG66, WKMN? Later: I will say that I've come around on the backlash section and at this point would support its removal. But the idea of properly defining the scope of a "worst backlash" section and managing it indefinitely would be too difficult, if not impossible in light of strongly contrary opposition. It could be interesting if properly done, but it's just not worth it. What you've said, JG66, about the necessity of a "conceptual framework" on hand is the key thing—these are articulable ideas, people conversant in rock history would "get" the scope, but it would take some work to actually find someone spelling all of this out in one place. As far as I know, there's not really a readymade critical framework that could be plugged into this kind of article in a way that conforms to Wikipedia's standards. The backlash thing is not quite a best–worst spectrum thing, it's a different axis—stuff like No Jacket Required, Metallica, and most U2 would also totally be on it. Given that a more robust backlash section would be necessary to defensibly keep Sgt. Pepper's on the list, it's probably gotta go. I'm still strongly opposed to the Metacritic proposal, though; see the subsection below.
I remain convinced that the Sgt. Pepper's stuff could be usefully applied somewhere else, where it would benefit from being mellowed, away from a setting limited (quite correctly) to the few sources that happened to use the term "worst". There's no doubt that, of the Beatles' work, it's received uniquely harsh criticism from certain corners of (generally punk-oriented) critics and musicians. That's partly the predictable result of being so consistently crowned number one—backlash from the ones who are just "sipping the Haterade"—but there is a significant contingent of dissenters who have articulated gripes with the album that are more than just kneejerk contrarianism. Where that would go remains to be seen. —BLZ · talk 23:52, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
I'd have a lot of respect for those who have long argued for retaining this list if they'd put some thought into its scope and how it is that certain albums and songs appear. If I fancied myself as a virtual traffic cop, that's what I'd have done a year back rather than perpetuating a mood of dysfunction; I'd take the list into draft space or a sandbox and work on making the piece sufficiently robust to withstand the constant drive-by criticism and ridicule. And not just to satisfy the requirement for lists on Wikipedia, which is the bare minimum, but to make sure it's a useful addition to the encyclopedia. The lack of a "List of music considered the best" makes its existence doubly perplexing.
Terms like "worst" and "best" are bandied around in music journalism with complete abandon. Way more so than in film criticism, a particular work, if not an entire act, can be branded with extreme superlatives simply to exaggerate a point or signify a changing of the guard in what has always been a generational thing. You're right to highlight the punk aesthetic, BLZ, but equally an anti-rock backlash was the foundation for a UK publication such as Smash Hits in the early '80s and other voices that might be considered part of the rockism/popism debate. Even before then, the NME totally reinvented itself – pre 1972, it was the most pop, most populist, most shallow basically, of the UK music mags. Charles Shaar Murray's pieces in the NME and Tom Hibbert's for Smash Hits are legendary for their irreverence; I can almost guarantee that Hibbert or someone at Smash would have come up with lists of the best and worst music ever in the whole wide world – that sort of rhetoric was their currency, and readers loved it. Q then formed from the same team behind Smash Hits, but with a mission to support many of their former victims in a bid to capture the older/richer audience with the arrival of (expensive) CDs. Zig-Zag, punk 'zines, Select all had their own, uncompromising outlook on music old and new, and to various degrees caught and created the zeitgeist at any one time: if it wasn't always youth-centred, "good/bad/best/worst" was rigidly aligned with the "cool" quotient. Within that editorial positioning, a once "great" piece of music was practically demanding to be shot down. In the case of Sgt. Pepper, it's unquestionably in the bull's eye: parents, musicologists and posh people liked it – aargh!! It represented the pinnacle of a movement in pop that was unprecedented, when untrained rock 'n' rollers increasingly sought to improve and progress artistically. None of the preceding works in this escalating process – usually identified as Rubber Soul, Pet Sounds and Revolver – nor the inferior albums or songs Pepper was blamed for inspiring have received this level of derision, not withstanding Pet Sounds' inclusion in two of those backlash/overrated-related pieces. All of which is why I was calling for more context for Pepper's inclusion here, if it's to be retained. Yes, the album has had its share of detractors beyond the fickle motives of repositioning and trend-chasers and -makers, but the key point is it's the totem for all things musical and cultural in 1967, if not the entire decade. So it's the most famous "bad" album. And, btw, the "worst"/"best" journalistic shorthand was never more commonplace in the UK than during the '90s, with the rise of Oasis and lads mags such as Maxim ...
None of this gets us any closer to a solution, I realise. When it comes to determining criteria for inclusion here, I can't help thinking most people would recognise the need to introduce something that ensures the list is more logical (more responsible, I'd call it) if we had a corresponding "best" list – and they wouldn't hang about it either. As mentioned, I envisage a list of "best" albums and songs filled with entries that apparently merit inclusion because the likes of Hibbert or CSM enjoy throwing a fly in the ointment for effect, or a publication is trying to carve a niche for itself (or it's hanging on for dear life, per MM in late '98). In such a scenario, we could have several entries that have no place at all in the vast majority of critics' "best" lists – the albums and songs could even be critically reviled – but without a criteria that places overall reception above isolated polls and assessments, anything goes. And that would be a joke, and not the funny kind. JG66 (talk) 14:33, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
@JG66: I think you're right about all of this. I first waded into this discussion on a whim after getting an RFC notice—the ultimate folly—and as such I had blinders on and really considered it as a question of just one album's inclusion or exclusion. But these kinds of questions really do require deeper holistic thinking about the article's overall scope and condition.
I think the most boiled-down method to question the intention of "worst ever" polls would be to ask: "Is the intention of this source to tear down/upend 'the Rock Canon'? Or is it to define an Anti-Canon?" I think that's the critical distinction. It's also why Philosophy of the World should remain on the list, despite recent positive reassessments: it's a quintessential entry of the rock Anti-Canon, it would have never been rediscovered otherwise, and any reassessment starts from the position that it is notoriously awful but deserves the benefit of the doubt. In this way, Philosophy of the World is the ultimate anti-Sgt. Pepper's, because it inverts the love-hate relationship: if Sgt. Pepper's haters are necessarily dissenters, then Shaggs lovers are necessarily apologists. Sgt. Pepper's most ardent critics hate it most for its showy artfulness (i.e., the very same things that make it capital-G "Great") and its all-consuming acclaim, while the Shaggs' defenders recognize its notoriety—probably found out about them only because of that notoriety—but nonetheless find charm and sincerity in their woeful amateurism (i.e., the same quality that makes them capital-T Terrible in the first place). Some hate Sgt. Pepper's because it's "Great", and others love the Shaggs because they're Terrible—but make no mistake, even if they're lovable, they are indeed Terrible.
You said "None of this gets us any closer to a solution, I realise," but... I think actually you're onto something. We both know there are countless sources that critique endless "best"/"worst" lists as provocative-but-shallow (or, conversely, endless reaffirmation of the same boring old picks). In a future definition of what counts or doesn't count as a "worst album", we could include a footnote explaining in detail why fleeting "worst of" lists published by magazines don't carry much weight—along the lines of what you wrote, but substantiated by credible sources making the same or similar points about the list-making culture industry. And what would be a better example of why we're filtering those kinds of polls than to mention: "For example, a 1998 Melody Maker poll named Sgt. Pepper's... [etc etc]"? It would convey two important messages. To any future editors thinking of adding Sgt. Pepper's, it would signal that "yes, we do realize this poll exists, but here's why it's not a good idea"; and to most readers, it would illustrate why why we're tuning out these sorts of sources with an amusing example: "truly dear reader, what better example of the kind of goofy, flippant outcomes these polls are capable of producing than Sgt. Pepper's?"
Speaking of scope... I tepidly raised this question below, but I do think this list should be renamed to something like "List of musical recordings considered the worst". The content wouldn't really change at all, as it's already impliedly the subject of the article. However, this would be of much greater importance for any future "best" list. As if things wouldn't be heated enough already—imagine having to balance 18th-century classical symphonies and legendary (but unrecorded) historical concerts alongside, like, Nevermind and what have you. A section providing the best classical music recordings would be manageable, but leaving it open-ended as just "music" it could very quickly become an apples-and-oranges thing. —BLZ · talk 20:47, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
BLZ: Whether the motivation is to "tear down/upend 'the Rock Canon'" or "define an Anti-Canon" – absolutely, you nailed it. But, as encouraged as I am that you think my contention has some legs to it after all, where is the commentary on this division? You mention "countless sources that critique endless 'best'/'worst' lists as provocative-but-shallow", but are there sources that critique "worst" lists? Perhaps I'm missing something (eg I know I linked to a fairly withering, Washington Post review on the Guterman book, and maybe there are other pieces), but it's the lack of coverage of the concept of "worst music" that's apparent to me, and the reason this list fails to satisfy WP:LISTN. No?
There's no doubt that the tear-down-the-Rock-Canon aspect is a key point in the evolution of pop music from 1977, if not before. And this issue interests me in the development of rock criticism, having done some work at Music journalism#20th century rock criticism (led there, incidentally, by reading so much about Pepper's reception and impact). As you've said, U2 are in the line of fire as another "great" act to be torn down; I think we can agree Lou's Metal Machine Music and Elvis' Having Fun, and the 1978 soundtrack for Stigwood's Sgt. Pepper film also, are firmly in the "define an Anti-Canon" basket. If we're at all able to contextualise Pepper and any other "great=>worst" albums and songs in the way you're suggesting, then the list would have that essential, "useful" (rather than mischievous) quality by offering clear examples that reflect major developments in pop culture, or at least each generation's attempts to signal them. That would be fantastic – I'm in. But per my original point about "sideways editorialisation", I can't see that there's any commentary that allows us to take the subject in that direction. Again, apologies if I'm being a bit dim on this; I'd love to be proved wrong, I just don't see it yet.
Will reply below on your point about the list title. Your reference (way above here) to Florence Foster Jenkins had got me thinking about that issue anyway. Funnily enough, while searching for sources for a conceptual framework for this list, I came across one Darryl W. Bullock, "acclaimed British biographer" (per Kirkus), for his 2016 book on Ms FFJ (also reviewed in the NYT), author of two books on the worst music of all time, and presenter of a radio show with the same theme. Perfect, I thought – but the first of the two volumes of The World's Worst Records appears to be self-published ... JG66 (talk) 06:30, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
"Where that goes, remains to be seen". In its main article, under reception. A paragraph starting with, "Conversely..." would suffice. WKMN? Later [ Let's talk ] 16:19, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
I'd previously mentioned that it should go in the article's "Retrospective appraisal" section, yes. To clarify, it's not an issue of placement so much as integration of the available material. There's a balancing act between providing sufficient context and giving the naysayers their due consideration without going overboard (as, it seems, the original anti-Sgt. Pepper's sockpuppeteer-crusader was doing). —BLZ · talk 20:47, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
I would like to go ahead and notify some editors who participated in a previous RfC so that they can weigh in - SummerPhDv2.0, ILIL, Tosk Albanian, Herostratus, Jayron32, GenQuest, Hunter Kahn, LM2000. The Grand Delusion(Send a message) 23:35, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

"List of recorded music considered the worst"?

Not to open another can of worms, but surely the current title is over-broad, no? —BLZ · talk 01:28, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

BLZ: I agree, the list does focus solely on recorded music, so ideally the title should reflect that. Alternatively, as you've said previously, perhaps the inclusion of an artist such as Florence Foster Jenkins (rather than a specific work) would allow for the broad scope suggested by the current title. That is, with FFJ, her claim to "worst" fame appears to be based around a judgement of her as a performer. I imagine there might be a few others who fit in that category. JG66 (talk) 07:46, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Why isn't The Wall on here or maybe angelic 2 the core?

Not pink Floyd's The wall Doug Walker's the wall I get why but just add it already,this will make that article no longer an orphan Tee wew28 (talk) 04:39, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

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