This sounds like a job for someone else!

This is not a fair match-up for me to judge. My relationship with folk music is still developing, and Disintegration has been a long time favorite album. It wouldn’t be fair to judge these just on my listening experience. I decided to enlist some help. And what better place to turn than the amazon.com reviews for critical, well articulated opinions. Both albums had over 90% 5-star reviews. Let’s start with the positives:

Disintegration
“I can still remember the first time I heard this album. The day it hit the shelves, I borrowed the disk from a friend and sampled it while on break. Like no other album before or since, the brilliance of this work immediately overwhelmed me. I listened to the first 30-45 seconds of each song, track by track, through the whole disk. I kept waiting for weak songs to skip over, but they never came...I bought a copy for myself immediately after work and listened to it in it's entirety, twice, that very night.To this day, so many years later, Disintegration remains one of my favorite albums. It is pure, raw, distilled emotion set in an environment that encompasses such a depth and breadth of feeling that you could lose yourself there. For a time.For me, this is the Cure's Magnum Opus. If you don't own it, get it.If you have it, go listen to it again.If you listened to it and don't like it, try again. You didn't hear it first time around.”

Blue
“Everything you ever heard about this album is true - plus more. Indeed, every accolade bestowed upon Dylan's Blood On The Tracks (which appeared two years later) applies equally, if not more so, to Blue. The hyper-realist detail in the lyrics coupled with the startling uses of imagery is only half the story. There's also Mitchell's astronomic melodic flights coupled, implausibly enough, with the utter intimacy of vocalizing. This is rock & roll poetry - intense, elemental, mercurial and mysterious. It's so 'classic,' the entire album can be reconstructed out of cover versions (and some of the most obscure are the best). There's nothing like it - and every second is as true as pain, and as pleasure.”

Sounds great! Both emotionally intimate, timeless albums. The kind that should be in this tournament. And both deserve to move on. But only one can. Any drawbacks to these albums?

Blue
“i read the reviews of people who bought this and said buy this cd it's great and i went out and did it and i regret doing it after listening to this cd i can understand why no radio stations play her music in my city not 1 station.her voice is really awful.and the music is enough to put anyone to sleep.you wanna hear good folk music listen to love's forever changes or the kink's 68 masterpiece village green preservation society.this is the last time i go by other people.i can see why less and less people even know who joni mitchell is anymore.like her fans she is a dying breed.”

Disintegration
“Disintegration is right...
The Cure were best when they did fun pop songs, like in the 80's and early 90's! Pop songs are what gets played on radio, and the radio is the only sure sign of what's good in music.
Obviously this album doesn't get played on the radio.
I took a chance with this album, thinking it would feature the "fun" rock side of Robert Smith. Alas, it's totally boring rock. I understand that The Cure wanted to try their talented hands at ethereal rock or whatever, but this stuff just drags on and on and on like a movie or something. Yes, it's very cinematic; cinematic with Smith's mopey vocals, which sound so much better when he's in a good mood. And why wouldn't the guy be in a good mood? HE MAKES MILLIONS OF DOLLARS!! Simply put, this album is too long, too brooding, and too ambitious in scope.
For people in college only.
TAKE CARE!!!”

Huh. Sounds like both these albums suck bad, and neither should be played on the radio.
Here is the thing, though: I don’t like awful voices, but I do like boring rock

Disintegration wins.