Entertainment For Lively Minds
When do musical crimes cancel out previous good behaviour?
Posted by pompeygeorge on 12 March 2011 - 8:03am.
Are there some musical crimes so heinous that they invalidate many more good songs?
For example, when Stevie Wonder reachs the pearly gates will St Peter say "so you co-wrote Tears Of A Clown, did Sir Duke and Superstition, this is a shoo in. Whoa! Hang on - I Just Called To Say I Love You? You're going down!"
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Don't forget
Ebony and Ivory.
The sentiment's a good one, but it's just too twee for words.
You beat me to it Mr Clef
I was pondering whether this horror could outweigh McCartney's Beatles and Wings stuff. I'm not a fan of Jackson so it just further damns him in my eyes.
Jackson?
?
I believe he's thinking of
The girl is mine. Which is possibly even worse than ebony and ivory.
Indeed I was
Well it was early and I was a little hung over
THE GIRL IS MINE IS AMAZING.
Finest comedy record ever committed to tape. Altogether now: AH DON' BELEEEEEEEEEEVE it!
And I think
everyone would agree both their careers peaked with Say say say.
A celebration of harmony
Which they both recorded separately.
John Lennon
You changed the world as a Beatle, made your most popular song as a solo artist and died tragically. However, we're not going to overlook Some time In New York City, are we?
It will be most unfortunate for Chuck Berry ..
... if St Peter says, "He could play the guitar just like ringing a bell ... A bell that goes Ding A Ling, Mr Berry?"
or sadly
Dear Mr Berry I take no joy in also adding to your list of sins . I present your mood / rudeness and downright poor performance inc obvious contempt for the audience at the Sunderland Empire in the late 1980's .
The Laughing Gnome
cancelled out any street cred Bowie had earnt from Ziggy Stardust when it was re-released by his former record company in 1973 after Life on Mars charted.
An attempt by the NME to rig the voting to get Bowie to perform The Laughing Gnome on his Sound and Vision tour resulted in the phone-in to decide his setlist being scrapped.
A shame as it really suits his mockney vocal styling.
Simple Minds
You play I Travel to people and they don't believe its them. Most of their early stuff, brilliant. Post "Once Upon A Time" onwards? just beyond awful...
Could. Not.
Agree. More.
Always fun
to put them on a futurist compilation and see the reaction of people who know them as the poor man's U2.
So true, great example
Just how the hell do you go from something like Chelsea Girl, Love Song, Waterfront even, to Belfast Child?
Haven't listened to this in years, dear god it's awful...complete with synthesised tin whistle. I was quite a fan before this came out, never really recovered from this one.
No one ever believes me, but
No one ever believes me, but I swear to God it's true.
Simple Minds were on a compilation CD I ripped to my lap top using Windows Media Player in 2005.
Song: correctly labeled as 'Don't you forget about me"
Band (also correctly, IMO) labeled as: Simply Shite.
IThat was how it appeared in the track listing. Cross my heart.
I love Belfast Child
So there. In fact the whole album is pretty good apart from Biko which I've always hated.
New Gold Dream was their best though.
On the same album...
"This Is Your Land" with Laughing Lou Reed, which I think is a great song.
Always (and still) great value live.
Kerr and co
Yep, that's the cut-off point for me too. Sparkle In The Rain, although reaching for the big stadia designed sound, still had a glorious clatter to it, Upon The Catwalk particularly for me, but Once Upon A Time had a bland sheen to it that they never returned from.
But those past highlights were, in my opinion:
Chelsea Girl
Life In A Day
Wasteland
Changeling
I Travel
Theme For Great Cities
70 Cities As Love Brings The Fall
Sweat In Bullet
The American
Love Song
New Gold Dream
Someone Somewhere In Summertime
Promised You A Miracle
Upon The Catwalk
Sparkle in the Rain
Can you forgive the 'Street Hassle' cover?
Surely this is an even bigger crime
Macca
does seem to have a very coarse setting on his shit filter at this time, doesn't he? I can imagine John Lennon pulling him back in line in the HJH with a few carefully chosen barbs.
He has a wide setting on his 'inclusion' filter.
He's one of the handful of pop musicians to enjoy making music aimed at young children. The hipocracy may think that Mary Had A Little Lamb, The Frog Chorus, the one about Wirral The Squirrel, Yellow Submarine, etc are shit but under-5s - their intended audience - love 'em.
The fact Macca can produce kids songs of lasting appeal just shows how versatile a songwriter he is*
I'd like to see Tom Yorke or Morrissey produce something aimed at that demographic :-)
(* Note that I think that Ebony & Ivory and The Girl Is Mine were ropey, but they sold a lot more records than anything I've ever written so who am I to throw stones)
Not an attack on the Frog Chorus
just a badly placed comment on some of the clunkers that found their way onto disc at this point in his career.
Not Such A Bad Boy with its opening lines "I laughed at the teachers/who taught at my school/they kept one-armed bandits/in a swimming pool" being a prime example.
His output for the youngsters is, as you say, excellent, but I doubt that a lot of the songs he wrote would have been allowed to escape into the public domain with Lennon's or someone else's guidance. Not that he didn't release a few clunkers himself a few years earlier.
Oh, and The Girl Is Mine is Michael Jackson's work. Their joint effort Say Say Say was a more tolerable effort altogether. Perhaps there's a lot to be said for musical partnerships as they seem to produce less ego-driven results.
Oh gawd, here we go again
I wish this repeated slur would just die a death. Not attacking you, Art, more the widespread misunderstanding (as I see it) of We All Stand Together. I get so fed up of hearing and reading people slagging this song off. IT'S A CHILDREN'S SONG, OK?! It was written for an animated children's film, and listened to in that light, I think it's a delightful and wholly successful piece.
There are dozens of crimes against music that McCartney has perpetrated (Spies Like Us? Press? Pipes of Peace?); why pick on an innocent little song that a lot of kids will enjoy? Not to mention adults...
Agree totally. Macca can
Agree totally. Macca can also record as much crap as he likes, he has at least earned that right.
You really think I'm letting you in here?
For 'Half A World Away' and 'Don't Look Back'? Both derivative, and pretty much lost in a sea of overamped sixth-formery, turgid whining and agricultural barre chords? Think again, and stop waving those eyebrows at me. You're frying, sunshine.
Just attach them to your favoured period
For instance, i just say I love 70s Bowie and 70s Stevie Wonder. With that out of the way, you can leisurely argue the toss over Tin Machine.
I thank Stevie Wonder for having written...
I Just Called to Say I Love You. Within the first couple of bars of his playing it at Wembley Arena in 1987 all right-minded folk in the audience took it as the cue to head for the bar. As I returned to my seat the familiar (and most welcome) riff of Sir Duke kicked in. Perfect.
I really like "I Just Called to Say I Love You"
I really like "I Just Called to Say I Love You". I think it's a lovely tune and a lovely lyric. I don't care if it's a bit sappy and sentimental. I'm a bit sappy and sentimental, as are most people when push comes to shove. I don't care that it sounds like it was made on one of those cheap Bontempi organs from Woolies; I think that adds to its charm.
Why is it so disliked? Because it was really popular? Because it's a bit wedding disco/karaoke? It's not that I'm not snobbish about popular records because I am. I can't stand Robbie Williams' "Angels" for instance because it's completely fake, doesn't make any sense. But I have no problem at all with "I Just Called..."
Comparison
I think that these days when you hear a Stevie Wonder song, you tend to hear one. IJCTSILY is generally thought of as being well below the standard of other Stevie Wonder songs so it feels like a wasted three and a half minutes when we could be listening to Sir Duke. I think we tend to begrudge it in comparison to his better songs.
Fair enough
If I was choosing my Top Ten Stevie Wonder songs I don't suppose "I Just Called ..." would make the cut, but I don't really see it as some wild aberration. He always did soppy love songs: My Cherie Amour, You Are The Sunshine, Isn't She Lovely, Lately etc. "I Just Called" was just another in that line.
Personally...
I don't think it was in that line. The other songs you mention managed to steer clear of outright mawkishness, which for me is the most off-putting aspect of IJCTSILY.
I Just Called
is so ghastly and inferior to My Cherie etc that it cannot possibly be considered a continuation of that line.
i adore Lately
It's a brilliant tune, a heartfelt lyric and, especially in the 2nd I HOPE my premonition misses' bit one of the most astonishing vocals I've ever heard.
On a related theme, say what you like about ebony and Ivory, but Macca's harmony when Stevie sings People are the same wherever you go' givs me goosebumps every single time.
Why is it disliked?
I can assure you if I played this at a Wedding disco I would rightly be pelted with rotten vegetables.
The worst part
of the whole sorry song is the ending. Before you are released from it's banality you the Bontempi 'bom-bom-bom'.
Ghastly.
Agreed
I bet all the people who hate IJCTSILY would defend 'Bohemian Rhapsody' to the death. Now that's what I call muzak.
Karma Quomeleon
St Peter - "Ah! Messrs Parfitt and Rossi! The very men that gave us Down Down, Caroline and Whatever You Want. We're all for a bit of no-nonsense good time boogie up here, so please do step this wa...oh, hang on, what's this? (face flushes a hot red colour)
...(booms) Margerita Time? Burning Bridges (Come on You Reds)?
Satan - (diabolically) "Mwa haha haha haa!" *prod!* *sizzle!*
Quo - "Ouch! Yaroo! Ooyah!"
Also agreed
If I Just Called to Say I Love You is such a bad song, then I'd love to see any of its detractors write one better.
I'll give it a go
but you won't be able to criticise it unless you yourself could write one better ;)
Don't worry
we'll judge yours on sales figures ;-)
Since when...
were sales figures any indication of quality? If that was the case, Coldplay would still be practising in their bedrooms.
If you have to be good at making music
to comment on the music of others, then we may as well all log-off now.
Lately
When he can produce classics like this, what is there to forgive?
Oh Jesus God almighhty!
I posted about this song yesterday, but on a Blackberry, where you can't see the videos.
I logged in this morning expecting to see the original video and was disappointed to see a more recent-looking Stevie and consequently expected the 'money note' to be missed/avoided.
More fule I.
it's sunday morning and I've a tear in my eye.
As they say, thanks for posting.
Thanks for the nod
Much appreciated after being lambasted for daring to criticise Mr McCartney.
Emperor's new clothes and all that, but even a creative genius has his off days.
And I thought Eric Clapton was supposed to be God...
Stevie Wonder
Is the man who produced the following run of albums in the '70s:
Music of my Mind
Talking Book
Innervisions
Fulfillingness' First Finale
Songs in the Key of Life
Hotter Than July
God should be moving to one side to make room for Stevie.
Paul - may I be so bold...
... as to suggest the list could start with 1971's 'Where I'm Coming From'?
That would make it seven albums in 10 years! Actually, eight albums in 10 years because SITKOL is a double. Make that 8 1/2 albums because SITKOL originally came with a 4 track EP. That averages out to a new album every 15 months! And quality albums, too.
That's absolutely incredible.
Jeff Back
Despite his enourmous backlog of very creditable work, wheneve I hear his name I think of the Hi Ho Silver Lining hitmaker.
Hi Ho Silver Lining
is great!
It's transcended the wedding disco status it had for many years (where it languished alongside The Faces' Stay With Me) and is now officially cool again.
Jeff even performed it live a few years ago with Jack White guesting.
In any case, the original 1967 single had that wonderful Les Paul-through-a-Marshall guitar solo - probably the first time it had been heard in the Top 20.
And it had Beck's Bolero on the B-Side.
Ah yes Mr R. Stewart...
"Lots of nice boozy gigs with the Faces - fine, fine, - and what a super run of solo albums - Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells a Story, Never a Dull Moment. That all looks very acceptable. In you come. Wait ... hold on a minute. What's this? The Great American Songbook Volume 27? Hmmm ... think we might have to reassess the situation here."
Bleuuurrgh!
you thought frog chorus was bad...
.....how about this McCartney horror!
Parents should keep this to hand in case a child swallows bleach, it can induce vomiting with ease!
How does he sleep?
To which the answer is...
"Very comfortably thanks, on an enormous pile of cash".
Terrible chorus
But the verses are nice.
Prince
More or less 1990-present cancels out the brilliance of his work 1980-1989.
Not this old - and wrong - chestnut again....
I'm sure I've argued this ad nauseam, but Prince has produced some fantastic work in the period you cite. It just seems lazy to dismiss it so casually. I could compile a tracklist of absolutely peerless gems, but the naysayers wouldn't ever accept anything to disprove the cliche. Suffice to give one example - The Gold Experience (1995)is the equal of anything from his alleged imperial phase.
The Gold Experience...
...has a few really good tracks on it, such as "Gold", and I really enjoy "Endorphinemachine", "Shhh", and "Dolphin", but the remainder is pretty weak.
As for the remaining albums, I'd point to maybe half a dozen tracks I don't mind, but by and large they're frankly toss in my opinion.
Evidently you disagree, but hey - that's life.
Let's Work - Mick Jagger
while it didn't totally cancel his previous good works this caused a real crisis of confidence in me as stones fan...it made it extremely difficult to argue the proposition that Mick was still cool
the horror ...the horror...
The British Museum
is currently running an exhibition devoted to Eric Gill, a man who were he alive today would surely be in jail.
I think Glitter has deserved everything the law has thrown at him but there are definitely double standards at work here.
Shouldn't this be under
the Rehabilitation of Gary Glitter thread?
I was going to post something similar about Eric Gill who in his diary admitted, to quote Wikipedia "...sexually abused his own children, had an incestuous relationship with his sister and performed sexual acts on his dog."
Nice.
But in Gill's case it would be impossible to wipe out his legacy without structural work on public buildings to remove his sculptures and destroying what are very useful fonts and the books that were printed in them.
If he hadn't documented the abuse himself it might never have been detected.
There are plenty of other famous people who have been suspected of being child abusers whose deeds may have been covered up after their deaths. Whether the person's achievements are diminished by their deeds or not, the rewriting of history either to cover up their transgressions or to exclude them for their transgressions is a dubious practice.
We can't rewrite the past nor should we try to do so.
Oops!
Indeed, wrong thread!