Did Any Major Critic Predict the Commercial Failure of The Rolling Stones' 'Undercover' (1983) Before Its Release?

The short answer is: no major critic outright predicted commercial failure before Undercover hit shelves, but the album’s reception was so lukewarm that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pre-release buzz was dominated by the band’s violent “Undercover of the Night” video (banned by MTV) and the general sense that the Stones were chasing trends rather than setting them. Rolling Stone’s Kurt Loder, in a November 1983 review, gave it four stars and called it “their most cohesive album since Some Girls,” but that was an outlier. Most critics after release