1001 Albums You Must Die Before You Hear

#50: Doug Walker – Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall (2019)

Walker’s pathetic demolition of Pink Floyd’s The Wall is on many “worst album” lists, but MATT KELLY thinks otherwise.

In case you’re unfamiliar, the Nostalgia Critic is a “character” created by YouTuber Doug Walker to rip off James Rolfe’s Angry Video Game Nerd format, only the Critic would target shitty movies, delivering his angry, Mad-magazine-writer’s-room-trash-can quality rants with a level of smugness and comic stagnation that would make Michael McIntyre blush. I say “character” because the Critic is essentially Walker, but calling it a character allows him to say sketchy shit and distance himself when convenient. But it was 2007, it was the style at the time, and he became extremely popular.

Come 2019 and Walker is still there, plugging away, though the freshness is gone, better and newer creators have come along, and a series of controversies (and some REALLY BAD feature-length films) have hurt Walker’s brand considerably. “I know”, he thinks. “I’ll do an album-length parody of Pink Floyd’s The Wall that heavily features Slipknot’s Corey Taylor. That will get my career back on track.”

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There are three significant problems here:

Walker is an awful vocalist. Now I know it’s a comedy album and he doesn’t need to be Pavarotti, but his grating, punchable “hahaha I am so funny hahaha” voice will drive you over the edge before you’ve got through a single song.
It’s a comedy album that isn’t funny. “Lol this movie/album sucks, they were stoned when they made it, it’s so mopey” is hard to get 43 minutes out of and Walker doesn’t manage 4.3 seconds. Floyd fans who take the original seriously may also find Walker LOLing his way through Roger Waters’ emotional graveyard distasteful.
WHO IS THIS FOR? This has no audience. Its purpose is mystifying. Who wants to listen to 43 minutes of the Critic taking potshots at The Wall? I can’t imagine even Critic fans were asking for this. It’s such an odd, specific, self-indulgent concept it becomes fascinating that it exists.

Positives? Actually, featured musician Rob Scallion does a pretty good job – his guitar skills recreate the moody, beautiful instrumental passages from ‘Another Break In The Wall Part 1’ and ‘Is There Anybody Out There’ to great effect. At the same time, it’s odd for a comedy album to invest so much in straight recreation of instrumentals – you think they’d cut that out and get to the jokes (such as they are) which asks further questions about Walker’s intentions here.

As for those jokes, what would you call a parody of ‘Comfortably Numb’? I’ll give you a moment. Wait for it… are you ready? That’s right…

‘COMFORTABLY DUMB’. BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAA SO WIT AND ORIGINAL.

This distressingly obvious, low-hanging fruit approach to humour persists across the album, with jokes more likely to elicit groans of despair than laughs. At times the album gets a little serious/earnest, like Walker is sad that he no longer likes The Wall as much as he used to, like something in him is changed or gone, but this is weird rather than entertaining or funny. Also in the second half, he seems to forget what he’s doing and starts using the lyrics as a vehicle for whining about how internet culture and social media and how there are all these lame people on it who don’t like it. This, incredibly, is worse than the first half.

There are quite a few people who call this THE worst album ever made. I don’t agree. It is not funny at all, and Walker’s lack of writing/performing talent combined with his gigantic ego, make for a repulsive atmosphere. However, the music is still Floyd and not that bad, and as much as I don’t like this album, my disgust is fairly mild. It does not compare to the likes of Black Lace’s Blue Album, Submarine Man’s No Stockingz, Onision’s I’m A Meme and others in terms of sheer OH MY GOD STOP STOP STOP THIS IS INTOLERABLE *VOMIT NOISES*.

Still, by the end of this, you’ll be willing to build a wall and pay for it, just as long as Walker is on the other side.

You do get to hear Corey Taylor sing the Spongebob Squarepants theme though.