Entertainment For Lively Minds
Too short songs
Posted by NJC on 4 September 2010 - 12:21am.
The entry earlier about long songs got me thinking about songs that are too short, those that you are only starting to get as they end... What songs don't get close to outlasting their welcome?
Fist few That sprang to mind:
Sigur Ros - Hoppípolla
Whiskeytown - Houses on the Hill
Verve - Blue
So any more for any more?
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Anything by
Agoraphobic Nosebleed would do for me
If we don't count intros/outros or interludes
and agree that the very short bits of songs on Abbey Road go together and form a medley of sorts, then the shortest songs I can think of are;
Parachutes - Coldplay 0:46
Eyelids - the Dodos 0:55
Song For the Asking
Note perfect though it is
I always felt that at 2:22 Jimi's Little Wing could have done with a few extra verses or a longer guitar solo.
SRV later remedied that and took it to 7 or 8 mins which was much more like it:
That was my first thought
Though I don't have much love for the SRV version. Or the Sting one, funnily enough. Still "Bold As Love" serves as a long version.
Almost as bad
was Clapton's pedestrian cover on the Layla album. I know it was meant to be a fond tribute following Jimi's then-recent death and everything, but bloody hell! Put some effort into it lads!
I love the SRV version since it's purely instrumental and takes nothing away from the original.
Abbey Road
Most of the tracks on the second side are too short. "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" on the other hand is eight minutes too long.
Really?
I love it,especially through headphones. It's so heavy
Isn't that the point?
They were nearly all fragments of songs that hadn't been finished. Then some bright spark came up with the idea of linking them all together,
The result: genius!
Window
The full, and rather splendid, version of 'She Came In Through The Bathroom Window' was on Anthology 3 and I seem to remember that the Beatles Monthly suggested in the summer of '69 that it was going to be their new single.
The first minute and five seconds
of "You Never Give Me Your Money" is my favourite bit of Beatles music
'The Letter' by The Box Tops...
1.58 of tuuuune.
Good one
It finishes on a bit that would make a good middle eight.
Sparklehorse
Friends
Pretty much the whole of The Beach Boys' 'Friends' LP is made up of songs that seem about a minute too short!
Still a wonderful record though.
Stranger Into Starman
by Aimee Mann from @#%& Smilers. About a minute and a half - I just want it to go on so much longer.
Was thinking about this for my NW Massive September Mingle mix CD - must be able to shoe-horn it in somewhere in the running list.
(Sorry Grant - don't have any Agoraphobic Nosebleed (!), but I do know you also like Aimee Mann - how Massive to be able to love both of those)
Tom Waits - "Johnsburg, Illinois"
I certainly wouldn't say no to another couple of minutes of this.
Mercury Rev - Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp
Fades out just as it begins to climax - always feels like it needed to go on for another 2-3 mins of wigging out.
Her Bushiness
The Man With The Child In His Eyes.
It's perfect...but I always want more.
Neil Young
always thought "Till The Morning Comes" could have been - er - actually finished
Cripple Creek Ferry - same album - is all to brief too
The Smiths were good at this:
Girlfriend in a coma
William, it was really nothing
Please, please, please let me get what I want
Shakespeare's sister
This charming man
History of Rock - XTC
Van
Morrison's Linden Arden Stole The Highlights seems to cut off just as he soars.
Most of the songs on Pixies'...
... first two albums aren't even close to being too long. Broken Face, for example, is 1:30 of perfection, and in fact the only song on Surfer Rosa to break the 4 minute mark (Vamos) outstays its welcome quite considerably.
I struggle to think of many songs that are TOO short, though. Pop should be a concise form, and my default position is "if you can't say it all in two and a half minutes, don't bother". Obviously there are honourable exceptions, and it doesn't necessarily apply to other forms, like jazz anyway, but even then I do prefer the jump-in-jump-out heat of a Charlie Christian to the more extended parpings of Miles and Coltrane. Poor attention span, maybe.
Anyway. The most consistent bee in my musical bonnet is people going on too long: just because you CAN fit 70 minutes on a CD doesn't mean you should. Just because you CAN repeat the chorus one more time doesn't mean you should.
And look at that. I've gone on too long.
Not meaning to
turn this into another Miss Newsom debate, but I always think that this one is just too damn short;
Also, this one by Elvis could do with another few minutes or so;
Oh, and this belter screams for another verse.....