Albums I Regret Buying

"Regrets, I've had a few. Then again, too few to mention," Frank Sinatra made famous. Regret is one of those universal feelings we cannot escape, and which we can apply to nearly every aspect of life. Some of us live in regret, both for the things we have done and the things we have not. Perhaps the most infuriating situation is to find yourself regretting the decisions you have made, and yet believing that making the other choice would have been no better. Ah, regret.

Musically, regret comes in the form of wondering how we did not see or know the people we would later be, acquiring albums that spoke to us in the moment only to fade to the point of being unrecognizable. It is an unfortunate fact that we don't know ourselves nearly as well as we like to think, and finding titles on the shelf we haven't pulled out in decades is a solid reminder of that.

So do I regret spending $3.99 on a copy of The Backstreet Boys greatest hits? Actually, not for a damn second. I probably should, but nostalgic pop is absolutely a thing, and I heard those songs so much they seeped their way into my brain.

Here are a few I do regret buying, for a few different reasons.

Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf

When this album came out, I bought into them the way so many others did. The hit singles were great, and it was something new and different to my ears. I didn't know what desert rock or stoner rock were, but I knew that a band that wrote "No One Knows" should be good for something more. As it turns out, that wasn't exactly true. The album is a solid affair, and I can still get some enjoyment out of it, but the reason I regret buying it has more to do with options. As I held it in my hands for the first time, I was debating between it and Fall Out Boy's "From Under The Cork Tree". I made the wrong choice. It was later rectified, but I missed out on time with an album that resonates far more with me today than Queens Of The Stone Age ever did. I took a chance on predicting the future, and I got burned... slightly.

Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run (30th Anniversary Box Set)

The talk around 'classic' albums can be toxic to our mindsets, as it brainwashes us into believing things before we ever give them thought. When it comes to Bruce Springsteen, the adulation "Born To Run" receives is massive. I could not escape hearing about it again and again, and eventually I got worn down and told myself I needed to have the album. After all, "Thunder Road" and the title track are both fantastic. When I saw the box set edition with a documentary about the making of the album, and a full live show on DVD, it seemed like the perfect way to engross myself in The Boss.

Nope. As it turns out, my fascination was short-lived, and soon thereafter I realized the Springsteen I actually care about is "Darkness On The Edge Of Town". And of course, the similar box set for that record sells for far more these days. Oh well. The point is that I didn't trust my own wariness about Springsteen, and I would up with something that doesn't fit on the shelf, and that I haven't pulled out in several years.

Tool - Lateralus

I don't know if I wanted to be cool, or if I was in a phase where I was seeking out the heaviest things that were still acceptable to me, but I was very much into Tool when this album came out. "Schism" and "The Grudge" were unlike anything I had ever heard before, and back then I thought it was clever they wrote a song based on the Fibonacci Sequence. I know better now, and I have spent the years since being bored by Tool time and again. Their focus on math over melody has not just bored me, but also infuriated me, and convinced me that many times knowing too much about music ruins everything about making the art. I will still enjoy "Schism" if it comes on, but I haven't tried to listen to the whole of the album in so, so long.

The Wonder Years - The Hum Goes On Forever

This was my Album Of The Year winner in 2022, so why do I regret buying it? No, it isn't that the album has faded in my esteem in the time since then. I still consider it a great record, but at the same time it is a terrible one to actually own. The packaging is the cheapest and flimsiest slice of cardboard imaginable, formed with no spine and at a size that doesn't fit on the shelf with all the other CDs. Additionally, it comes with only a fold-out picture, and not lyrics and liner notes. The whole thing feels barely better than burning a CD of your own, and not at all worth the money spent on it. Despite liking the record, I do wish I hadn't bothered getting myself a physical copy.

Metallica - St Anger

Here is the biggest embarrassment of them all, and I know exactly why I bought this album. I was new to metal as it was coming out, so I could profess ignorance of the subject. In a way, I didn't know any better. Metallica was the biggest metal band in the world, and they had a new record, so someone getting into metal would obviously be drawn to it. That's one side of it, but another is that I was also a nascent guitar player at the time, and as the singles preceded the album, I found that they were songs I could actually play. That was a bad sign, but I also didn't know that at the time. The incredibly simple 0-1-2 riff of the title track made me feel as if I knew what the hell I was doing on the instrument, when all it really did was show how little Metallica had put into making the record. 

Nothing makes you feel stupid like buying a terrible album, eh?