Entertainment For Lively Minds
Great songs you don't like...for stupid reasons
Posted by peterthecook on 24 March 2010 - 4:22pm.
I really like Tom Waits, but I must confess to disliking the song 'Jersey Girl', simply because the first time I heard it, I thought he sang: "I'm in love with a Jersey cow." It's a ridiculous reason, as the song has all the hallmarks of a Waitsian classic, but I'm condemned to have a rather unpleasant image leap into my mind whenever I chance upon it.
Are there any great songs that you don't like, simply because of a ridiculous reason?
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I think...
I would love it even more if he was singing Jersey cow.
I had an ingrained resistance to 'Start!' by The Jam
Simply because their voices go all high and girly during the "If I never ever see you..." bit. I've got over it now, thankfully.
I don't like
'I Don't Like Mondays' because I hated the video for it and in particular the section where Geldof is sat on the couch and turns to the camera to sing those words (it's set on a repeated loop which only grates even more) and then runs his hands through his hair.
It just bugged the hell out of me and I know not why.
theres nothing
right with that song, if you ask me
I have an intense dislike
of the Peter Sarstedt classic 'Where do you go to my lovely', because I used to live in a basement flat and the bloke above me would have enormous rows with his girlfriend, followed by the slamming of doors as she stomped out, then he would drink himself silly whilst playing that bloody song (which I used to like) over&over&over&over&over&over at top bleeding bloody volume.
Grrrr! Still makes me fume.
Every time I hear the line
"He sent you a racehorse for Christmas And you keep it (nauseating pause) just for fun, for a laugh, a-ha-ha-ha a-ha ha-ha"
yet another small portionette of my brain succumbs to twaddle-induced dementia.
Maybe it should be updated to
'for a laugh, L O L'
(or does that belong on another blog?)
I too
... have an intense dislike of the Peter Sarstedt 'classic', and it is for this reason:
1) He spends 4 minutes asking "where do you go to my lovely?", before
2) telling us in the last verse that he KNOWS where she goes to, but
3) he's not going to tell us where it is, no sir.
Tosser.
I've always hated Careless Whisper..
But then again, it IS shit.
There's nothing
stupid about that reason.
"Born To Run"
The sax solo, the breakdown, the count-in, and the execrable piece of po-faced pop doggerel that follows: "The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive".
No it flippin' isn't; it's full of tight-lipped stressed-out ugg-boot-wearing call-centre team leaders driving their daughter's to dancing classes in profoundly unnecessary 4x4's who're too preoccupied with having a better loft extension than their next door neighbour to notice who they or anybody else really is.
And that's just the men.
Now nob off, Bruce you big fraud, before I twat you one.
On a similar note...
... the line in "Thunder Road" - "you're not a beauty but hey you're alright". A former girlfriend used to say it was a horrible thing to say. I think she was right.
I know I could be heading
for a Hepworthian lexislap for saying this, but every millisecond of "Thunder Road" makes me want to paint quick-drying liquid methadrone on my eye balls with a nail varnish brush.
You're SO wrong.
Solomon Burke
had a song on Don't Give up on Me, his rather splendid come-back record of a few years ago, called "None of us are free". A good song that drives me nuts because (and how sad is this?) I am pedant of Olympic standards who believes that it should be "None of us is free" and so every time the chorus comes around, I squirm. Surely there must be a support group out there for me and my kind....
Oh, thank god!
Another pedant!
I get equally annoyed by the Noisettes 'Never Forget You' when she sings "We were mischevious" - there's no bloody 'i' before the 'ous' for gawd's sake! It ruins an otherwise perfectly decent little song!
And another one!
I love Ambling Alp by Yeasayer, but everytime Chris Keating sings "You must stick up for yourself, son / Never mind what anybody else done" I cringe, despite the fact that I know it's almost certainly ironic.
I'm prepared to forgive him though because of the wonderful last verse: "Now, the world can be an unfair place at times / But your lows will have their complement of highs / And if anyone should cheat you, take advantage of, or beat you / Raise your head and wear your wounds with pride".
In a similar vein
Daniel Johnston has a song called "Don't let the sun go down on your grievance" which he pronounces throughout as "grieviance". Good song, but it makes my teeth ache when he does that.
Candle in the Wind.
I know exactly where I'd insert said candle to extinguish it.Always reminds me of a time in this septic isle when a collective madness took over many of my fellow citizens and the GLW and I fled the country to escape the sickening outpouring of pseudo grief engendered by a rabid media over the sad demise of Di.
A pedant asks
If you or I think it's a "great song" then how come you or I don't like it?
If it is regarded by the rest of the world as a "great song" and you or I don't like it, then our reasons are not stupid.
Too Much Too Young
Terry, you immature poseur - if you do spread manure on my bed of roses they'll only grow better, you know.
Satisfaction
It's all wrong - you've got bass and drums driving a long, but that guitar riff mirrors the bass, except with a hint of shuffle that makes it jar against the strict 4/4 of the rhythm section. It's makes it neither one thing nor the other and consequently is one of the many unresolved things in life I have to accept I can do nothing about. Aaaargh!
DRUGS....
...you never took enough of them...
Easy Lover
It was ALWAYS on the radio. I move on when I hear the opening bars. It reminds me of chilly launderettes, having no money, buses, flu and grotty student kitchens.
Then again, so does Life In A Northern Town, but I like that.
'We Can Work It Out'
because I heard it just before going to see 'Jaws' when it first came out, aged ten. It scared the crap out of me and ever since I've always associated the song with the film. I long since got over my terror of the film but have only just regained my love for what must be one of the HJHs very best songs.
Real Gone Kid by Deacon Blue
Ricky Ross sings "I'll do what I should have did".
Gramatically incorrect! From a school teacher as well!
Lady Of A Certain Age - Divine Comedy
Ending the sentence with a preposition - and by such a literary heavyweight, I can only assume it's ironically intentional:
"You had to marry someone very very rich
So that you might be kept in the style to which
You had all of your life been accustomed to"