Double Fanstasy - -good or bad?

Strange question concerning a 40+ year old album. What about Beethoven's 8th symphony - good or bad? My advice: Listen to it and make your own decision...

It (at least John's part, not Yoko's) was an okay, but it had some really good songs on it. Probably should have combined John's "Double Fantasy" songs with "Milk and Honey" and it would have been a better album but certainly not his best.

Well the OP is right.

In that place in time, late 1980, there was excitement for a new John Lennon album. He was a Beatle after all, and he'd hadn't done anything in years.

The result, the best one can describe it is anticlimactic. Mediocre at best. Critically panned. After only three weeks on the chart, Double Fantasy was already slipping. It's a lousy thing to say, but it's the truth, DF would have disappeared completely in early 1981 if not for the tragic event.

Music is like fine wine in the sense it's interesting to judge it as time passes. A couple of years back, I took another good listen of DF. It sounded ridiculous to me. I don't think the follow up material, which posthumously became "Milk and Honey" was much better.

So, was DF good or bad? Neither, it was astonishingly mediocre.

Some of Lennon's best solo songs are on it.

Only half the album is his, though. The other half belongs to Yoko, so I suppose it depends in part how you feel about that. I like Kiss, Kiss, Kiss but never could get into her music, generally.