2. NEIL YOUNG Trans (Geffen, 1982). Young's experiments with a voice filter blew up in his face. After a few songs, this album became more painful than a Led Zeppelin weekend.
3. PUBLIC IMAGE LTD. 9 (Virgin, 1989). John Lydon doesn't want to be an offensive boor anymore. So now he's just a bore.
4. 10,000 MANIACS Blind Man's Zoo (Elektra, 1989). No more than a clumsy assembly of bruisingly obvious, politically correct statement making. Only one album before, with In My Tribe, Natalie Merchant had seemed like pop music's poet laureate.
5. THE REPLACEMENTS Don't Tell a Soul (Sire/Reprise, 1989). Paul Westerberg couldn't tell the difference between sensitivity and wimpiness. And it sounded like some Sire A&R man lectured the band on how to write an alternative hit.
6. PINK FLOYD A Momentary Lapse of Reason (CBS, 1987). In an attempt to cash in on the Pink Floyd name, the Roger Waters-less group turned out new-age fluff with woozy sound effects.
7. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Born in the U.S.A. (Columbia, 1984). Corporate rock at its most shameless. Springsteen knew he couldn't play stadiums unless he tossed out the intimacy of albums past and produced a record with more impersonal anthems than any LP this decade.
8. THE POLICE Synchronicity (A&M, 1983). See No. 7.
9. R.E.M. Green (Warner Bros., 1988). Michael Stipe traded in surrealism for statement making. The lush, enigmatic art-pop of albums past was nowhere to be found; in its place were simplistic anthems designed for heavy AOR rotation.
10. BOB DYLAN Shot of Love (Columbia, 1981). "Lenny Bruce is dead!" keened Bob on this bewilderingly awful platter. Any number of disillusioned folk-rock fans thought Dylan had departed for the heavenly home for hung-up has-beens, along with Elvis and Aimee Semple McPherson.
