Isn’t it odd that some songs are great in places and then render themselves unlistenable by being awful in the space of a few bars? Case in point : I came across this link to a pretty ropey live version of Them’s Here Comes the Night, but even here the opening bars/chorus are louche and soulful and dirty and , thus, great. But then that awful rinky dink verse comes in and kills the whole song. The verse really ought to apologise wholeheartedly to the chorus for cocking up what could have been a majestic song. And how can the same writers/musicians have produced both sequences?
So : songs that let themselves down. Any more?
Carrie Anne by the Hollies has one of the greatest choruses in pop music, but the dreadful steel drum bit in the middle makes me cringe. Who thought that was a good idea???
Those drums are beyond the pale. Both songs from same period – mid 60s. Maybe pop was still struggling with whether it wanted to be ‘serious’ or ‘novelty’.
Steel Drums often have that effect.
The Planners Dream Goes Wrong from last Jam album (The Gift) is a lyrical (almost) venomous swipe at “posh boy” architects and inner city decay.
And then the steel drums start and it loses it’s power
Lovely Rita. The intro is a magical, psych masterpiece that encapsulates the lysergic essence of Pepper-era Beatles. Then the verse starts and it’s another corny Paul oompah granny pleaser.
The laugh at the end of Big Yellow Taxi. So false.
Good shout. It’s the musical equivalent of Keegan’s Newcastle side getting so close to glory in 96, then choking at the last.
Re that and this thread, there’s not a moment in this that’s remotely disappointing – blood and thunder from both sides.
It was indeed an absorbing race. Fingers crossed for more of the same this season.
I’m With Stupid by the pet shop Boys has a killer lyric in the verses pinning the absurdities of the Bush/Blair relationship. Would be a protest classic were it not for the chorus which goes :
I’m with Stupid
I’m with Stupid
I’m with Stupid
I’m with Stupid
The cigar was nearby.
I’d nominate Go West – still a great, great record, but after the wondrous sturm-und-drang for almost its entirety, it just ends with the whimper of a different rhythm, the diffident repeating of the title and a caterwauling bint. It would have had the perfect natural conclusion with the final male chorus.
I’ve mentioned this before – the electric piano solo in She’s Not There,.Brilliant song, then suddenly a terrible attack of noodling, only vaguely in touch with the chords. At least the song comes back again afterwards.
Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young. What on earth is he doing at the end – tuning up? Checking his guitar still works?
“Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon
The verses: Great!
The choruses: not quite so great.
Good call on this. The verses are sublime with PS at his peak. The chorus is really a bit daft
Y’know, this is a dumb question…but which lyrics are the verses and which are the choruses?
“Slip out the back jack, make a new plan Stan” etc is the chorus.
Three spring to mind:
1. Urban Cookie Collective – The Key – sensational chorus/refrain, in both words and music; utterly useless rest of song
2. The Zombies – Time of the Season – the harmony in the last word of the pay-off line is painfully jarring to my ears. There was easily another melody and harmony option available.
3. The Animals – We Gotta Get Out Of This Place – moody, atmospheric verse followed by gallumphing nursery-rhyme chorus melody
Objectively you’re right about No.3, Colin, but if you left school that summer the galumphing nursery-rhyme chorus melody was perfect for rampaging down the corridor to.
Funny that the Zombies should turn up twice in this thread.
I’ve thought that about “Here Comes The Night” forever, but never articulated it – thank you!
Not a favourite of mine by any means, but “Say You, Say Me” by Lionel Richie spends most of its length as a smoochy ballad in the Three Times A Lady/Hello style, but for no apparent reason has a sudden and mood-destroying up-tempo section near the end that always bothered me…
Conversely, Abba’s “Chiquitita” is for the most part a dull, sub-“Fernando” knock-off, before that fantastic outro appears from some other song entirely…
I’m not a big Abba fan, but could listen to the end of Chiquitita happily daily. Part mystical Andean folk tune, part knees-up piano thumpathon. Brilliant.
Spaceman. Biggest disappointment ever.
Is the correct answer.
Chestnut Mare is one of the best Byrds’ songs, but the long LP version is all-but ruined by that strange little interlude which starts “Above the hills, higher than eagles were gliding,
suspended in the sky”
I love that. It’s the spaced bit of the spaced cowboy song. That and the ending. And the suggestion that his horse can be just like a wife (keep that to yerself, pal)
As I recall it was part of a musical project called Gene Tryp, that was never staged. Possibly explains the spaceyness of Chestnut Mare.
Co-written by the OMCOCH* Jacques Levy, dontchaknow (of course you did).
*One More Cup Of Coffee Hitmaker
Actually, upon checking, it seems that OMCOC was one of two songs on Desire written by just Bob on his own, but Edith Fnuction appears to have abandoned the desktop version of the Afterword.
Edit: Oh, she’s still here, except for that one comment. Perhaps she deems it perfect, and in no need of Edithing.
Let’s Face the Music and Dance. A wonderful arrangement, soaring strings, Nat King Cole singing a great lyric…and then!
A clunky, mood ruining, “Peter Fenn” style organ solo.
Cue everyone looking dismissively “and you like this?”
Come Live With Me by Heaven 17
“I was 37, you were 17
You were half my age,
The youth I’d never seen”
If she was half your age, she’d be 18 and a half. Or you’d be 34. You muppet.
Other examples of innumeracy in song include Katie Melua’s ditty about the number the bicycles in China, or something.
More mathematical incompetence:
Badly Drawn Boy – One Plus One Is One
Medicine Head also make the same basic error
But I’m glad to say that the Beatles passed this simple arithmetic test with flying colours in the final verse of “Come Together”.
Rappers: swearing works because we use it at the most effective moment and otherwise spare it. Only exemption is if you can swear in a spectacularly new and poetic manner.
Also: disrespecting the ladies ..most importantly, you’ve let yourself down.
Again, exemption for side splitting Ya Mama gags..
Additional, and probably more important, point. Because of all the effing and Jeffing on these records they have to be butchered for the radio. Sometimes another word is substituted: using “brothers” instead of a certain other word works just as well (and makes it a damn sight easier for us white dudes to sing along); for a while there, the word sh*t would be reversed to a kinda cute if unambiguous “isht” sound. But a lot of the time the words are removed leaving only a gap – creating an “MC Norman Collier” effect, rather spoiling things..
The better response is for groups like the terrifyingly uncompromising NWA to, er, compromise by recording alternative “radio friendly” versions of their songs, the sweary words replaced with equally forceful epithets.
They can forget off, the fuddy funsters.
Absolute Beginners by Bowie is frustratingly close to being a masterpiece but that stupid sax honking and parping throughout makes me cross. Take it away and you have a perfect song.
I think if ALL 80s sax solos were removed the resulting records would be massive improvements – even if they were still crap.
Quite apart from there being far too many of them, they always seem to be alto saxes with that nasty raspy, compressed sound. Either that or they (1) sound like they’ve been played by incompetents. Or (2) just “knocked off” by bored sessioners who, quite rightly, don’t really give a shit.
Saxophones are generally a really bad idea in anything but blues, r&b, ska, funk, reggae or jazz. And have been known to be crap in all of those genres too.
In AOR or Indie they are always wrong.
I beg to differ. I was listening to Radiohead’s ‘The national anthem’ on the way fo work this morning. On that track the saxophone parts have all replaced the guitar parts and it sounds great. No, really! Barritone comes in at 2’41
Fine stuff, Paws.
That could never be described as either AOR or Indie, though.
Or not as I see those genres. Neither of them would ever allow free improvisation like the horn players are getting into up there.
70s sax solos too.
Pink Floyd’s Money from Dark Side Of The Moon. The guitar solos are fantastic, but from day one I was appalled by the sax solo and still find it unnecessary and jarring today.
Things got worse when the three-man Floyd performed it live with Scott Page and his shit haircut on sax.
Saxes have no place in prog, unless we’re talking far out Soft Machine-style jazz prog.
I enjoy the soprano sax on Tull’s Warchild and Passion Play albums (though I understand Ian Anderson now dislikes the sound) – it’s very distinctive and light, fits in with the sprightly faux pomp and mischievopusness of those albums. But I have a problem with the tenor (I think) sax solo on the song ‘Too Old To Rock’n’Roll’. Yes, I understand it’s meant to be faux retro in style, but I don’t really like the song much anyway and when the sax part comes in (with the speeded-up rhythm) it sounds more B-division glam rock than 50s pastiche. It’s the same problem as the sped-up bit in the Lionel Richie song mentioned above. Ghastly.
Incidentally, there was a mulletted guy with a saxophone in late-period Lindisfarne (shudders at the thought)…
This is peak mullet, I feel.
Surely Gerry Rafferty would have something to say about that…?
Let’s ask him
Oh, more than just Elton Dean in the Softs. Chris Wood of Traffic was a good and tasteful player, as was Dave Jackson of Van der Graaf Generator. And Ian McDonald had a hot streak in the original King Crimson line-up. Jack Lancaster of Blodwyn Pig and your man Gemmill from Audience were useful too. In more modern times, Theo Travis from Steven Wilson’s quite hot band is a decent player.
(scrapes barrel..)
Actually, your point just about stands. Very few players around, in fact.
I agree that Chris Wood’s sax (and flute) was great in Traffic. Sax always worked well in Zappa’s bands, too.
What can you do that’s fantastic?
Love that line. We miss you Frank.
The full quote from Ian Underwood:
One month ago I heard The Mothers of Invention at the theater. I heard them on two occasions, and on the second occasion I went up to Jim Black and I said, “I like your music, and I’d like to come down and play with you.” Two days later I came up to the recording session, and Frank Zappa was sitting in the control room. I walked up and said, “How’d you do, my name is Ian Underwood and I like your music and I’d like to play with your group.” Frank Zappa says, “What can you do that’s fantastic?” I said, “I can play alto saxophone and piano.” He said, “All right, whip it out.”
SKRONNNNNK!
Love that album.
While I’m here, the sax player in the John Coltrane Quartet was serviceable. I’ll google his name in a minute….
Not forgetting Bloomdido in Gong.
Get away with you, Johnny! The sax is the best thing on Dark Side Of The Moon, which is otherwise dreary and dull (apart from that lady’s vocal on the headache song).
If 70s sax had been made a thing, Roy Wood’s career would have ground to a halt around 1970.
Even worse is the baritone (changing to tenor) sax solo on Shine On You Crazy Diamond – Pt. V also played by Dick Parry who appeared on DSOTM. And when I say “worse” I mean it kills the atmosphere of the track for me.
I’ve always considered that ironic when one of Syd’s final sins in the Floyd was to try and incorporate a sax into the line-up.
He was probably thinking of Family, of who he was a fan.
Iirc, he specifically wanted two female sax players.
I really like Dick Parry’s playing on both Dark Side and WYWH. Especially on Us And Them.
Tiggs, you need to get your ears mended.
It’s good playing for sure, but it breaks the spell, especially on Shine On… That’s just such a monster, atmospheric track, then it’s like “oh, there’s a saxophone”
“he specifically wanted two female sax players”
Aye lad, don’t we all
I don’t know about you, Moose, but ladies playing the saxophone does something to the base of my spine that I can’t control.
You mean it agitates your coccyx?
Hey Jude
Do you really need to go “Na Na Na” for 5 minutes?
There’s a reason for that long ending on Hey Jude which seems to have been lost in the mists of time.
In 1968 transcendental meditation was the latest fad and the Beatles were possibly its most high-profile advocates. The key to TM is the endlessly repeated mantra, by which the followers supposedly achieve higher consciousness. Only the Fabs could take such a mundane quasi-religious concept and turn it into a world-wide million selling pop single.
The end of Hey Jude is a mantra, which made perfect sense in 1968.
I can remember my 6 year old self and the rest of my family being astonished and excited at the audacity of the na-na-na bit in Hey Jude.
Any song involving extended “na na na na” should be included, see also “la la la la”. Ran out of ideas did you dearie?
Get a Job by the Silhouettes would have been a pretty short record under these stipulations. Especially if your objections extend to ip ip ips and noom noom nooms.
If you are a cooler than fuck black vocal group you get a pass. Pasty white boy guitar groups, no chance.
And God save the rama lama ding dong.
Amen.
The end of ‘Tusk’.
What do you want? Five minutes more freak-out then a massive drum hit to end, followed by the sound of the giddy, ecstatic musicians whooping and clapping.
What do you get? A boring slow fade.
The last few seconds of, er, Seconds by The Human League. Could have been the best song ever. Of all time . Ever.
This was pointed out on here before… the bit of Elton’s Tiny Dancer that’s used in Almost Famous makes it sound like such a great song. Then you hear the whole thing with its ugly middle eight, that really spoils it.
Yes, thank you – that was me I suspect, as I always bring that one up! 🙂 All of a sudden it sounds like it was written for the Eurovision Song Contest!
I also find the whole of “The Need To Be Free” by Imagination frustrating. Lovely melody, nice vocals, OK some half naff lyrics at times, but still – could have been a classic soul ballad if it hadn’t been recorded in the 80s with limp plastic toy synthesizers etc. Especially annoying is the moment at 2:30 when the ugliest synthetic “chugga-chugga-chugga” you’ve ever heard makes an apperance for no good reason.
Someone ought to do a lush cover version and get a hit with it!
Was Tiny Dancer a big song before Almost Famous. It was definitely the first time I’d head it, but I wasn’t sure if that was just a personal gap.
Tiny Dancer was never a single in the UK, whereas it was in the US.
This is probably why all the characters in Almost Famous are familiar with it, whereas in the UK, only people who owned the “Madman Across the Water” album knew it.
Thanks. That makes sense.
I’ve always maintained that Tiny Dancer is a great song that needs a couple of minutes trimming off it: it just sort of dribbles on for too long.
The really weak freak out solo bit in Genesis’ The Knife. Sounds like Slade. Which reminds me, Saturday Night on Desperado, the Eagles. Sounds like Slade. I know there are Slade fans here but let’s , like, get real.
I’d rather listen to Slade than either of those bands…
Me, too.
OO, get you, postmodern revisionists, you….
Nowt post-modern or revisionist about it. Slade are great, Genesis aren’t.
“Slade are great, Genesis aren’t.”
Hmmm …. I dunno.
Personally, I think I’d rather listen to “The Cinema Show” or “Watcher of the Skies” than “We’ll Bring the House Down” or “7 Year Bitch”. But that’s just me.
Hmmm…alternatively, I’d rather listen to ‘Look Wot U Dun’ or ‘Far Far Away’ than ‘Can-Utility And The Coastliners’ or ‘I Can’t Dance’. But that’s just me.
I’d just rather listen to Slade. Can’t stand Genesis (but oddly enough, I do like Peter Gabriel’s solo stuff).
But that’s just me…
I’d rather listen to my own eulogy than The Eagles
You say that like it’s an “either/or” thing. What if you were buried in one of these babies and some cruel relative decided you’d really like to hear Hotel California?
(@tiggerlion, you know if you fork out for one of these someone will program Appetite For Destruction on your post mortem playlist. And you won’t be able to stop it at six listens…)
I plan to be cremated. For that very reason. 😀
*thwack!*
I would rather listen to Slade than most other bands. (And I am not taking the piss or trying (& failing) to be ironic).
I fucking love Slade.
Me too. First album I ever bought was Slayed? I bought the CD, then the upgraded CD. Still love it, and them.
And of course, they’re a bunch of diamond geezers.
“Saturday Night on Desperado, the Eagles. Sounds like Slade. ”
In that case, the song’s title should be spelled “Satterdee Noite” or something like that, then.
Love’s 45 ‘Your Mind And We Belong Together’ is their last great recording, a cryptic, winding Arthur Lee tune worthy of Forever Changes, but then it fades out with with a horrible, tuneless, heavy guitar solo that presages his decline into hard rock.
Could have been such a classic, that trucker/CB radio thing Convoy. Droll and almost bluesy midwest “rap”, until this quite silly, over-poppified, massed girlies chorus impinges and spoils the “vibe”. Probably a producer under heavy pressure from a big bad record company, Too bad.
That’s a big 10:4, good buddy!
And bears! Even had a bear in the air!
Suicide jockeys and eleven long-haired Friends a’ Jesus
In a chartreuse micra-bus.
Hmm. Better post it, I suppose. Lost world.
Great stuff. That would be the lead item on any redneck country songs playlist. Well, after Okie From Muskogee
And unfortunately the impetus for “wacky” or “zany” morning radio announcers to record their own variation…
C.B. mania also propelled Red Sovine’s Teddy Bear up the hit parade. Seven inches of purest schmaltz about a lil boy who bothers truck drivers because “I get lonely and it helps to talk, because that’s all I can do as I’m crippled and can’t walk” whose Daddy used to bring him for rides in his truck but can’t now “because he’s gone”, causing the driver on the other end – a consummate professional – to conclude that “This hot load of freight is just gonna have to wait” as he “turned that truck around on a dime” falling, along with a load of other credulous truckers, into the trap that got him killed.
In the Irish charts, future Father Fintan Stack Brendan Grace, had a hit with a Teddy Bear spoof in which the boy on the radio had lost both his ears at “a hatchet throwing tournament”.
Tom Waits did Red’s “Big Joe and Phantom 309″…so it must be cool.
I read somewhere that Red used to have audiences crying with laughter doing “Teddy Bear” and really laying on the pathos…his manager told him that if he recorded a version dead straight he’d be guaranteed a hit. He did and did.
Fintan Stack is Guy Garvey. Everybody knows that.
Oh crikey, for a second there I remembered that dreadful “parody” of Convoy by the wretched Dave Lee Travis and Paul Burnett. It was a moment of pure horror.
I can only add that I like trucking.
I like trucking.
I like trucking, and furthermore I like to truck.
https://g.co/kgs/uEZKmF
Back To Nature by Fad Gadget. A brilliant song spoiled by the endless parping electronic jungle bird noises at the end. Still, I suppose I could always lift the stylus after the vocal ends……But for some reason I’m always doing something that means I can’t get back to my record player in time. Sorry, I’m beginning to go on like the endless parping electronic jungle bird noises at the end of Back To Nature by Fad Gadget.
A couple more:
Unguarded moment by The Church is sublime 80s pop ruined by a middle 8 clunkier than a spanner in a blender.
Two of Us is a sweet little ditty ruined by Paul’s middle 8. This is the exact point in their recorded output that Paul from The Beatles turned into Paul from Wings.
See My Friends – The Kinks
Atmospheric and genuinely ground-breaking Indian-influenced verses ruined by twee musical box mid section
Puff Daddy’s interjections on ‘Hypnotize’, ‘Juicy’… actually almost every song by The Notorious B.I.G. I’m talking about the constant, ‘Come on,’ ‘Oooh,’ ‘Yeah, ‘Uh huh,’ ‘That’s right,’ doing his annoying chuckle or unnecessarily rehashing Biggie’s last line.
The worst thing is, they can’t be unnoticed. As soon as they start to bug you, they’ll bug you forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF6d6xATAxI
UGK – Intl Players Anthem. One of my favourite hip hop tracks. Absolutely love all of it, except the bit where the usually impeccable Andre 3000 drops one of the clunkiest couplets in rap history:
“I’m so like a pip, I’m Gladys Knight
So the light from the sun, will not burn me on my bum”
Makes me shudder every time. Sounds all wrong.
A glaringly obvious vintage example of an utterly shite couplet. In Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May”.
“I laughed at all of your jokes
My love you didn’t need to coax.”
Ouch!
Agreed. “Coax” is only ever used for the act of trying to persuade a cat to come down from a tree.
Perhaps he meant that the fire brigade had been called, and rescuing Tiddles was best left to the professionals.
Still, it jars.
Jars? No, you need one of those plastic boxes with a wee door for cats. Unless they fall really hard from a high tree, in which case a shovel will do..
I bin shovellin cats. Shovellin cats. Shovellin cats til the sun go down.
And frankly old son, I’m absolutely done in.
No mention yet of “Live And Let Die”? I have brought it up before but…
– delicate, wonderful atmospheric intro…
– DUM! DUM! DUR! “Live and let die…” OH MY GOD THIS IS ACE!
– DAH-DAH-DAH! DAH-DAH-DAH! DAH! DAH! *faints with joy* COULD THIS GET ANY BETTER????
– Stupid ridiculous cod reggae bit begins “What does it matter to yah”? PAUL??? WTF? THIS WAS BRILLIANT, NOW IT’S SHITE!
And then Axl Rose got his mitts on it and Donald Trump got elected and all joy in this world was extinguished…
Still the best thing Waxy Pose has ever done…
Apart from his not exactly bulging release schedule over the last 15 years.
Kula Shaker (yes them) sounded quite good when they didn’t actually have any verses in their song (see below)
Unfortunately they insisted on having a verse or two in this song and it all rather went downhill.
Meditating with the marharishi,
Live a life that’s pure and sparse,
Lamb jalfrezi and fifteen pints of lager,
Sends a message to your arse.
Starry Eyed by Ellie Goulding. A beguiling pop record until the last few seconds. Makes my teeth itch.
Thank god for the radio 📻 edit. Free’s Alright now has an incomprehensible guitar thingy that thankfully most listeners are unaware of. See also the North American 45 release of the dame’s Rebel rebel.