I’m sure someone will point out a glut of classics featuring brass, but I just can’t stand parpy trumpets in songs. I don’t mean the solo sophistication of someone like Chet Baker; I’m thinking more Wake Up Boo (and I like Martin Cart’s songs, in general).
I also find myself getting rather annoyed about lyrics that clearly haven’t been proofread. Lisa Stansfield assures us that she, she, she has been around the world, but she can’t find her baby. She goes on to assert that, ‘I don’t know when, I don’t know why, why he’s gone away.’ Fair enough, Lisa. However, in the first line of the first verse, she then states, ‘We had a quarrel…’ Well, that’s a bloody big clue as to the ‘why he’s gone away’ aspect. She goes on to say, ‘I let myself go/I said so many things he didn’t know/And I was oh so bad.’ Again, the asperity of Lisa’s verbal attack is clearly the reason he’s buggered off. But hang on, there’s more: ‘He gave the reason, the reason he should go…’. Well then, why do you repeat your assertion, in the next chorus, that ‘I don’t know when, I don’t why/Why he’s gone away’? Come on, Lisa: where have you buried the body? It’s not too late to cut a deal with the DA.
Jagger has form. In Emotional Rescue, he boldly declares that ‘I will be your knight in shining armour/Riding across the desert/On a fine Arab charger.’ Armour? In the desert? Won’t that be a trifle warm, Mick?
Over to you: what annoys you in songs?
*Martin Carr – bloody autocorrect.
The tube that Peter Frampton puts in his mouth when he plays the guitar solo on Show Me The Way. What was he thinking? Just awful.
“Tonight there’s going to be a jailbreak, somewhere in the town”.
Someone had to.
On here it was remarked that said town could well be London, where there are several prisons.
Whereupon it was also remarked that it says a lot about London that it needs so many prisons. I couldn’t possibly comment.
Fair point, well made. Although it’s stretching it a bit to call London a “town”. Unless you’re the Phantom Raspberry Blower, obviously.
….or Wings.
Or you’re a Laaaahndaaner.
In which case, the term would be ‘taaahn’.
Single / Radio Edits.
OK, I know there is a necessity behind it for airplay, but many edits lose sections and entire verses.
The Jam’s Down In The Tube Station At Midnight is much better with the playout on the album than the dead stop of the single.
Bowie’s Heroes reduces for 6 minutes to 3 and a half, and Let’s Dance loses about 3 minutes (although to be fair the full version needed a trim)
Blue Oyster Cults Don’t Fer The Reaper has a minute and a half shorn (losing a lot of cowbell, and I think changes the feel of the song).
Play the album version – you wouldn’t knock Hey Jude’s na na na-ing off the airwaves, or lop out the operatic middle section of Bohemian Rhapsody would you, so why muck about with others
And re-recorded / “de-fucked” versions often don’t have the same feeling as the original song and vocal track
Hear, hear! The radio edit of Motorcycle Emptiness is particularly clumsy. Mind you, the radio edit of Piccadilly Palare omits the worst verse, so is better for it.
The editor giveth, the editor taketh away.
Honourable exception: Pretenders’ Talk of the Town. The single is ~30s longer than the album version. No idea why.
On a similar brassy* theme, 80s songs which shoehorn in a reverb-soaked sax solo. Yes, Careless Whisper was great, but not every other song has to sound like it.
(*) Yes, pedants, I know a saxophone is part of the woodwind family, but it made of brass and you blow down it to make a noise.
While I’m at it, Whales are Fish – they live in the sea and swim for their dinner. What more evidence do you need?
Tits.
…what…where?
Today I learned the saxophone is a woodwind instrument. I thought all instruments made of brass were automatically classified as brass instruments (as you would).
Next you’ll be saying the piano is a stringed instrument or is it percussion?
Stop! Hammer time!
Those songs that rely upon endlessly repeated rhythmic phrases, these days recorded digitally and looped, to the extent that all I can hear when they play is my own hopeful expectation that the drum loop will vary sometime soon.
After a while I have to skip to another song, becasue the sameness is driving me bonkers.
Please see Lodes’ OP adjacent to this one for an example at the start of her performance. To be fair she varies things greatly further into the song, but that articial repetitiveness to begin with irks me and gets my goat from the off I’m afraid. It’s OK for a demo, but not for a showcase delivery – get a bloody drummer or do it yourself properly!
It has often seemed to me with Dance Pop Music, that an “oh, that’ll do” attitude to the digital percussion is all too prevalent.
Just as long as that Marching Into Poland Beat is maintained, any old shit will suffice behind the intricate keyboards, bass etc.
I also dislike that horrible grating tone the majority of sax players on rock records seem to adopt.
I agree, 2 Unlimited would have sounded so much better with Elvin Jones on drums
Things that annoy me in songs:
Brian Kennedy
(Brian Kennedy)
(Brian Kennedy)
(Lee Perry)
(Lea & Perrins)
(Reggae Perrin)
The OP has awakened my deep hatred of the enforced jollity brought on by parpy brass.
Wake up Boo! just about gets away with it. Move on Up and Sir Duke are completely brilliant so they get a pass.
But then we have… Right by your Side (Eurythmics), Dance into the Light (Phil C) and Sight for Sore Eyes (M People). Not just the brass, but the bongos and the ref’s whistles and hi yi ya brrrr vocals as if we are to believe we are on the streets mid-carnival in Downtown Havana or Rio, having the time of our lives. We’re not. We’re eating toast in Woking watching you being gurning dickheads on Top of the Pops.
The trouble with me is that I can’t smile wide enough.
But then…Everybody Salsa by Modern Romance is genuinely joyful and I don’t mind it at all.
Those suburban soul boy wedge hair cuts were dreadful at the time and have not improved with time.
Occurs to me now that the vocalist Geoff Deane had almost exactly the same voice as the resolutely joyless Tony Hadley.
Anything with a bell tree. Back in the early 90s when a lot of acts had drunk deep from the Acid Jazz well, the sight of a support band setting up with a percussionist, with bongos and a *shudder* bell tree, was reason enough for me to bugger off to the bar.
Those of us old enough to remember the early 80s know that the sight of a pair of timbales* will strike fear into the hearts of all good men.
(*steady)
But when the percussionist strapped on a pair of nakers! All hell broke loose.
Guards! Seize his vibraslap!
A few things…
1 – military style drumming, even if only for a few seconds. There’s some on a Prefab Sprout song on the Protest Songs album, but I can’t remember which track. Macca’s Let ‘Em In has a bit of it too
2 – singers who repeat the other singer’s lines in a ‘soulful’ way. Sporty Spice did it a lot, not least in that awful track with Bryan Adams. The Elton John and George Michael single did it too. I like Elton John. I like George Michael. I like the song. But put them together and it’s ruined by that repeated line thing
3 – “…like you just don’t care”. When it was first used, on one of the Sugar Hill recordings, fair enough, but since then it crops up in so many rap songs, and it just makes me think the rapper is being lazy every time. I guess a lot of things rhyme with care, so it’s a nice easy line to shove in, but there are many more things that rhyme with care, so come on, use your imagination!!
4 – the bit where the keyboard singer in Level 42 sings. Even worse if it is accompanied by the video, where he’s wearing one of his loud, colourful Hawaiian shirts, has his loud, colourful jacket sleeves rolled up, and exudes an air of happy clappyness. I imagine he’s probably a nice bloke, but he grates on my nerves
5 – the ‘We..e…e…e…e…e…e…e…ell’ bit at the start of Lulu’s Shout. When I was in hospital after my spinal cord surgery, temporarily paralysed from the neck down, I underwent 2-3 months of intense physiotherapy and occupational therapy to get me back walking again. The hospital could have saved a lot of time and money by putting a radio at the other end of the room and playing Shout. I would have been walking before she even got to the “you know you make me wanna…” bit. And if they put another radio at the other end of the corridor with a Level 42 track on, I would have defied medical science by running before the scar on my neck had even stopped bleeding!
Bowie’s Where Are We Now has that military drum thing too. (I quite like it.)
I like the drums at the end of Cloudbusting too. And the steam train, which also has fk all to do with anything.
Shout by Lulu is a strong contender for most irritating song of all time.
Thank you. I incurred the wrath of grumpy Mr Hepworth on the old site by saying that.
When we were on our family holiday to Chicago a few years ago we were walking down the Navy Pier when Shout came on over the tannoy. The kids thought it was funny and said they’d laugh if they played Walking On Sunshine next, as that comes a close second (I haven’t told the kids about my dislike for Red Red Wine, cos of making a tit of myself after asking a girl to dance at Butlins in 1985 – I feel physically ill from embarrassment just hearing that one). Shout ended…and you wouldn’t sodding believe it, Walking On bleeding Sunshine!! By this time the kids were laughing so much they nearly fell off the pier. I said if the play Level 42 next I’m jumping off the pier, but thankfully no lifeguards were needed. The kids still love telling that story though, to the point that I’ve been wondering whether they called the pier DJ up before we went.
Ballads with no discernible tune. Just lots of singing. Always at a glacial tempo and invariably about lost or unrequited love.
Why can’t ballads be about something interesting – like weather systems in Eritrea, or turnips.
Funny you should ask
(Clears throat) mi mi mi mi, ahem yes
Ohhhhhhh, my Errrritraaaaen turrnipppppp left me forrrrrrrr an Angollannnnnnn Swede.
They can’t touch youuuuuuu forrrr it. Missssssusssss.
You have a beautiful voice.
“Just singing” and seemingly attempting to hit every note in the scale over 3 syllables.
Oh, and then a key change to finish
Precisley. It’s like they’re written by the same three European nerks….
The single, high in the mix drum beat that was popular a decade or so ago. I haven’t played any Amy Winehouse for a while but I remember of couple of her tracks being unlistenable because it sounded like someone was repairing the roof.
That over-singing, ‘why sing one note when twenty warbling all over the shop will make you sound really soulful and emotional?’
Melisma? As honed by the likes of Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston, so that an entire generation now seems to believe that is “proper” singing and should be copied. Agreed, it’s a technique that’s uniquely irritating. Stevie Wonder is prone to it too but no-one seems to notice when he does it.
I don’t mind a bit of melisma when it’s by Sam Cooke.
Novelty dance songs, where every man and his aged auntie know all the feckin’ moves.
Yeah like that old shit about birds…. what’s it called…. Swan Lake
Vocals that have been Auto-Tuned to oblivion.
I don’t know what’s not to like about a singer who sounds like they’re being repeatedly hit on the back of the neck with a crowbar.
Autotune is the sound of the spawn of Satan dripping from a talentless singer’s throat.
That’s about every pop song these days, isn’t it?
Military stylee drumming in reggae. It’s serves no purpose and is intensely annoying. Misty In Roots are big culprits here.
‘Soul’ singers who always, always end up shouting, wailing and screeching, especially when on stage with other artists, just to prove how ‘soulful’ they are. I fully expect to be shot down in flames here, but I include Aretha in this…yes, I know she was great and brilliant and steeped in the gospel tradition, but to me she is Shouty Woman and responsible for all the much lesser-talented Shouty Women that follow in her wake.
“You make me feel like a natural woman, and I want to see the manager”
I must be in a grumbling mood today, but I also have very little time for songs that give up on lyrics and resort to sha-la-la or la-la-la. Yes, I know there are probably 756 classic songs that do that.
A major annoyance is songs that give up on verse three and simply repeat verse one. It’s lazy beyond belief. Tiny Dancer, for all that it’s a great song, simply gives up and can’t be arsed to do a new set of lyrics for verse three.
Just about every Van Morrison song has a la la la bit in it.
I wish his current songs had that instead of his bloody lyrics.
A trans-Atlantic accent. Come on! Make yer mind up. I’m looking at you, Mick.
I think the spoken bits in Far Away Eyes may be the worst moment in the Stones’ calalogue.
Clarence Clemons’s saxophone solos in Springsteen’s songs always set my teeth on edge. It’s why I can’t listen to The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle or Born to Run without wanting to cut my own ears off. I realise that for Springsteen fans this is tantamount to heresy, but most of The Boss’s worst songs are those shouty stompers from his early albums (yes, Ramrod, I mean the likes of you), or the ones where Clemons’s sax drowns everything in a wall of sound excess that even Phil Spector would have baulked at.
It seemed to me Clarence had two solos, a fast one and a slow one. I saw Bruce at the NEC in the late seventies. It was three hours plus of being flagellated by sax.
1981, The River tour, magnificent
You may be correct. I know it was the night after Pete Townsend joined him for the encores.
He didn’t play UK between 75 and 81.
Funnily enough after The River Clarence became much less prominent, none on Nebraska (of course) or Tunnel of Love, less on Born in the USA than other E St albums then Bruce fired the band
Oh tsk.
Christ, amen to that, brother.
Obvious drum machines
Children’s choirs
Drum solos on studio albums
Bass solos on studio albums.
African choir virtue signalling (I’ll get me coat)
Autotune, melisima, and vocoders
Phoned-in covers for cred (see simple minds and Duran Duran “pin ups” albums, motley Roses being “punk”).
“Baby … Baby … Baby … Oh yeah … Baby” type lyrics
Novelty records even the creators know are shit (Bobby, jive bunny, etc)
An awful lot of this has been done by simple minds
The Jive Bunny Simple Minds record really didn’t work.
“Come on everybody
C’mon-C’mon-everybody
Gods, Gods, This fear of Gods”
How short, on The Afterword music blog, will be the thread “things that don’t annoy you in songs”.
I rather like how on here the same old questions come around again (and again) (and again).
I think I’ll post a thread on misheard lyrics.
Anybody seen minibreakfast recently?
My Wordle starter tomorrow is going to be plump.
TMI, dude
Key changes, with the honourable exception of Buzzcocks’ I Don’t Mind, which is sublime
I take it you don’t listen to prog.
Only if forced, though I like VdGG
I’m not that easily annoyed these days, and I get more and more tolerant with each year, but there is one thing that still irritate me: when songwriters force a word into a melody where it doesn’t fit unless you sing it with the emphasis on the wrong syllable. THAT’s annoying.
I like a bit of parpy brass. No parpy brass, no Dexys.
The saxophone is an un-punk instrument, but not in the hands of Lora Logic or Rudi Thompson. Without that, X Ray Spex would lose its identity (see what I did there)
And the trumpet? Without the trumpet, Chas Smash is just a bloke standing on stage shouting.
Shouting on stage while Lee Thompson plays out of key saxophone
(when he learned to play in key, it didn’t sound quite right so abit of re-arranging was needed)
Not so much a thing that annoys me in a song, more a song that annoys me in something, or should that be everything – Sweet bloody Caroline, which is now shoehorned into everything where there’s a gathering of more than three boozed up blokes. You can’t have a sporting event without it being played these days. Why?? It’s a great song, but I’m a bit fed up with it now.
Yes. Why?
It’s all passed me by but I suppose there’s a reason for it. Why ‘Sweet Caroline’? Did the lyrics fit a big occasion once, and it’s just become a thing since?
Or is it just some form of bantz? Big do = Sweet Caroline.
But why?
This. Bloody Sweet Caroline. Worse than Hitler
I have never ever ever sung Sweet Caroline. Even when “boozed up “ with two or more associates. It would be impossible.
And it most certainly isn’t a great song.
High bass. Not so keen. Bass should throb and sit with the rhythm section. Otherwise it’s not bass. Hooky did some good work but by Technique the bass is whining away on every song ‘cos it’s more of a rock record. New Order were better tending toward electronic dance music. The best sounding bass is on a track on Closer, only I found it was a keyboard, possibly by Bernard.
Unless you can make it sing, like Jaco did, leave those high notes for the guitarist and/or keyboardist. Five strings allow you to go even lower, but bassists just don’t need six strings.
Bassists don’t even need a bass. Just their voices.
BOOOODOWWWWWWWWWW
You’re right!
Rap inserts into otherwise quite enjoyable pop songs e.g. Da Baby’s contribution to Dua Lipa’s Levitating. I think the last time a rap actually added to a non rap song was way back with Groove is in the Heart. Unless of course you know otherwise…
What about Dub Be Good to Me and World in Motion, eh?
The Beardsley mix, obvs..
“Yooo moost deeefend and attack!”
Crazy In Love and the Fantasy remix with ODB both want a word, for starters.
That fake breaking voice thing that appears to be compulsory on every song played on every radio in every taxi. No luv, I don’t think you are connecting with your emotions, I think you ought to listen and learn from some decent singers.
Allied to the vocal ‘fry’ now common in young women the world over. The slight breaking up of the voice, rasp almost, at the end of words spoken at the lower register.
Fascinating how these traits spread to become a norm.
Good call Beezer. I offer up last year’s album by The Anchoress as evidence. Good songs, excellent production but rendered almost unlistenable (for me) by the relentless vocal fry.
Any members, or ex-membes, of Kasabian.
Singers who can’t say their “R”s. Not so much annoy as amuse, leading me to sing it in their way, marring the listening process for those there with me forever. Americans are particularly good, often just missing out the offending consonant. Witness Susannah Hoffs/Bangles on, for example, Eternal Flame: “Am I only deaming”
Or those who artfully try and get there, as in la belle Kate in the song of the moment, “Aaaaahwunning up the hill”.
Tell me you won’t always notice this forever more.
See also the loud and pronounced g in words where it is more often silent. Mockingbird by BJH is the best example, as one singer adopts, and the other doesn’t…
“There’s a mockingbird (there’s a mockingGbird) etc etc etc.
Mrs Moose’s favourite is the Eurythmics song Sweet Jeams Are Made of This. Once heard never unheard. As is Macca singing A Taste of Honey – “Tasting much shweeter than wine”
That’s the Steve McLaren Dutch import version.
Yesh id ish.
Can’t say I’ve ever noticed this about La Hoffs, and I have made extensive study of the subject.
He’s talking about listening to her. Why don’t you listen? you never listen!
But what if the song is in Northumberland dialect? No wait! I’m being serious. You’ve got to get those Rothbury Rs right when you’re singing Robin Spraggan’s Old Grey Mare. There’s a great singer at our club who will proudly demonstrate by singing Round the Rugged Rocks the Ragged Rascal Ran. (We know how to have a good time at the folk club, as you can tell. )
As for hardening Gs, well that’s just how they should be pronounced in Cheshire.
Also – Hoffs doesn’t look directly to camera when she sings. She looks to one side and then looks to the other side.
Overdone vibrato. I think we all know the main offender.
Over wrought vocals as if black gospel cept its not.
Drum machines, and my particular bug bear , on African records. Were adopted with gusto mid eighties. Rinky dink sound, poor programming. Of all the genres where you’d think they’ve got drumming covered.
Your last comment could be applied to reggae. The streets of Kingston teeming with the greatest rhythm sections on earth but no, let’s make everything sound like it was produced by Frank Sidebottom. It’s not irie, it’s bobbins.
Queen Of The Side-Eye.
Why do you want her to look directly at the camera?
Don’t bother answering that. And hands where we can see them, feller.