There are no bad albums, only bad listeners!

 

If you ever start thinking too much about the quality of your releases, remember that there are always people willing to hunt down and shell out for a bootleg of an obscure samba-punk-rave act (that only did three gigs and one split 7") in which the drummer is methed out of their skull, you can barely hear the "singing" (out of tune warbling really), the guitarist falls asleep halfway through, nobody bothered to plug in the synths, and the bassist never showed up.

Treasure to some, garbage to others.

 

And bad formats and bad listening devices.
Bad de-essers and poorly compressed bass drums.
Bad listeners are the root of all evil.
Makes one reconsider the purpose of this thread, doesn't it?.

 

I'm actually of the opinion that the songs matter more than the mix itself, myself as an example who writes well though is an aweful mix engineer. "It's all about the song stupid" is my mantra as a great mix can only enhance a great song, and a bad song is just a bad song even if it was mixed by a great engin(ear). A good song stands on it's own no matter how badly recorded.