Popular clunkers

Following up on the comments on the podcast about Michelle and Yesterday, I wondered what other timeless classics from major artists have lost their charm. For me it is, and always was Bridge Over Troubled Water. Just like the aforementioned Fabs platters, this Simon and Garfunkel grannies' favourite just brings me out in a rash, and always has done.

Any other suggestions?

Here is an antidote:

It beggars belief that the writer of this could tolerate Macca's schmaltzy warbings.

I don't get it

Which one are you saying's good?

David Hepworth | 5 June 2008 - 8:01pm

Only the video

The rest are unbearable.

(I obviously need to work on my writing skills. I haven't even had a drink yet, but it has been a long day.)

innominate | 5 June 2008 - 8:16pm

Im*g*n*

A song so vile I dare not type its name. I'd accept listening to Hughie Green reciting Rudyard Kipling's If on a continuous loop more readily than suffer any more "Im*g*n*". It's reached the stage where I actually rush out of rooms as soon as that clunky piano intro comes on.

"You may think that I'm a dreamer"? No, not really John. I think you're something else entirely.

Archie Valparaiso | 5 June 2008 - 8:10pm

I couldn't agree more

well said Archie

badartdog | 5 June 2008 - 8:29pm

That's three of us then.

God I HATE Imagine. I load of old tosh. Lennon's voice grates and the tune just plods along.

Imagine there's no Lennon,
It isn't hard to do...

marmiteboy | 5 June 2008 - 9:37pm

Mercury Communications

In the 90s I worked at Mercury Communications - now Cable and Wireless. They had one of these ghastly corporate cultural change programmes designed to get us to do more work without commensurate increases in pay. It was called - wait for it - Imagine.

Nothing can exceed the horror I felt when we were told at one meeting that one of the managers with a musicianly leaning had rewritten JL's dirge to be the song of Imagine - the corporate change programme.... "Imagine there's no land lines" etc. I shiver at the thought.

Twangothan | 6 June 2008 - 1:20pm

I can imagine too

It was similar this this?

Fraser Lewry | 6 June 2008 - 1:27pm

I truly expect

them both to have taken their own lives by now.

Leedsboy | 7 June 2008 - 9:07pm

That's priceless

But not an inappropriate choice of material, one might argue, given the grandstanding schmaltz of the original

Larry Heliotrope | 9 June 2008 - 9:09am

Stairway To Heaven...

When I was a teenager, I listened to it every day for about four years. Now, I press the skip button. It's not that I think it's crap... I'd just much rather listen to 'Trampled Underfoot', 'For Your Life' (Mark Ellen's favourite, fact fans) or 'When The Levee Breaks'.

Patrick Crowther | 5 June 2008 - 8:13pm

Bohemian Rhapsody

is worse than all of the above. Cod Operatics from an overrated buffoon and a tone deaf guitarist. Drummer and bassist should have left them to it years before.

Steve Turner | 5 June 2008 - 8:43pm

I'd take Bridge Over Troubled Water...

....over "Working Class Hero" any day.

David Hepworth | 5 June 2008 - 9:02pm

wonderwall

Please make it go away cant stand it anymore.

Also

As stated above my hate started festering in 1977 and has still not abated for "Stairway to Heaven" Now go on Jimmy and Percy fuck off into your bushells and hedgerows"

"Carry on my Wayward Son" Kansas .Cant stand it.
same for all we are is "Dust In The Wind" No you are much less than that my ugly bearded whiny little friends.

"Fields of Gold-Sting. Jesus wept, and this one is my wifes "funeral" songs. I'm dreading the day(well of course I am)Still working on her to change it to "The Intro and The Outro"

"Allison" Elvis Costello. Ok that little party dress has come off one too many times,get dressed and leave. NOW!!!!

Seeing as Lennon is being given a deserved good kicking, how about "How Do you Sleep?" Not much with that bloody spiteful childish racket playing Little John.

Oh and "Give Peace A Chance" Christ if only.

Oh and Duran Duran's "Rio" what is this annoying whiny little turd of a song actually about??

Oh and Marvin cut the crap about the "Sexual Healing" you coked out old banger. Can't begin to imagine how much actual "healing" was happening holed up in Belgium.

and that night out with Iggy and David sounds a real joy in "Nightclubbing" doesn't it? Give me "I Love To Boogie" anytime.

bingham | 5 June 2008 - 9:40pm

Michelle

Was a jokey "pretentious" song Paul used to play at student parties with John Lennon's art school pals. It was John Lennon who suggested they recorded "that French thing you used to do" for Rubber Soul.
It's not terribly funny, it has to be said. Not half as funny as the idea that John Lennon was either "working class" or, in any real sense, a "hero".
With you all the way on Imagine Archie. And, as for Bridge .. well the only thing wrong with it is perhaps overfamiliarity.
As far as Yesterday goes I've never really understood its appeal. There are many Macca "schmaltzy warbings" that are much better ( My Love, I Will, And I Love Her etc.)

Richard Lowe | 5 June 2008 - 9:45pm

Lennon

As others have mentioned, was just as capable of producing schmaltz - Imagine, Woman, Starting Over, Beautiful Boy.

But then I genuinely think the best post-Beatles record involving John Lennon was Mind Train by Yoko Ono, 17 minutes of tangled rhythms and Yoko squeaking "Dub-dub, dub-dub, Dub-dub, dub-dub, Oh, ooh, oh, oh, Dub-dub train" endlessly, so what do I know?

Fraser Lewry | 5 June 2008 - 11:33pm

I just called to say I love you

and Ebony and Ivory spring to mind, not least as Stevie is getting a mention elsewhere. The latter song, of course, should segue seamlessly into The Girl is mine, revealing, yet again, that there is rather too much Macca in the garden of schmaltz.
On a surprising note, Jack Johnson doing Imagine, on the otherwise largely unremarkable Darfur album: really quite good.

Retropath2 | 6 June 2008 - 9:53am

I've always loved...

...most of McCartney's ballads. Can't say I'm fond of some of his 80s hits nominated above but I'd still take them over ever having to listen to John Lennon's 'Somewhere In New York City' album ever again. I bought that because I figured any record with Lennon and Frank Zappa had to be good. BIG mistake...at least Macca is tuneful even at his worst!

Still have a lot of time for 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', and Elvis' cover version of it.

JJ | 6 June 2008 - 10:12am

"Here's a request from a Mr Pot...."

I don't have quite the venomous hatred of "Imagine" that others do - perhaps because I've skipped it/turned off the radio for so long that it's lost its power to irritate me.
But last night I watched "The Killing Fields" for the first time in years and was reminded of perhaps the worst ever use of a song in a film, at the end, in the aftermath of all the sadistic bloodshed caused by the Khmer Rouge. The director has since admitted that "Imagine" has lyrics that Pol Pot himself would go along with. Not a fitting choice, then.

Nick White | 8 June 2008 - 12:31pm

"Smoking In Bed"

The book of interviews with Bruce Robinson (he wrote The Killing Fields and wrote and directed Withnail & I) has a fascinating chapter on this film. Well worth reading. And Robinson hated that song on the movie.

LOUDspeaker | 9 June 2008 - 12:04pm