A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Music for the asses

'Mudge started this, with his post on listing the worst songs ever by allegedly "great" bands. Leaving aside the subjective question of what makes a band great, I started giving the idea some thought.

Then Metafilter joined the fray with an entry asking people to list the worst songs from albums and CDs in their own collection. Rather than cheat and list every track from Shatner's "The Transformed Man," I decided to merge the two, using CDs in my travel case (currently holding about 75 discs) and not my full collection (which I have neither the time nor the inclination to sift through at this point). Not only is it hopelessly subjective, but now I can deflect any criticism for omitting something by claiming I don't own it. Genius!

Having said that, here's my listing of the 15 worst songs from great bands whose CDs I actually own.

15. "Stand" - R.E.M. (Green) - I saw R.E.M. about a half a dozen times between 1987 and 1989, and on at least two of those occasions, Michael Stipe described this as "the worst song ever written by man." Who am I to argue?

14. "Damaged II" - Black Flag (Damaged) - Someone needed a swift kick in the ass for including this droning punk equivalent to a slow jam on an otherwise great album. I vote for Greg Ginn, mostly because Henry Rollins would put me down like a crippled dog.

13. "Try Not to Look So Pretty" - Dwight Yoakam (This Time) - I like Dwight, and this album contains two of the greatest country/pop/ songs ever recorded: "A Thousand Miles from Nowhere" and "Ain't That Lonely Yet." It's also home to this unfortunate selection, which stands apart from the aforementioned tracks thanks to its inexplicably whiny tone and half-assed execution. Perhaps he was singing to his rapidly departing hair.

12. "Roll to Me" - Del Amitri (Twisted) - Okay, I think the Dels are a great band. Most of their albums (especially the excellent Change Anything) are chock full of songs about alienation, loss of love, and drinking, which is what makes "Roll to Me" so obnoxious. Apparently written to improve the group's mainstream appeal, this atrocious bubblegum concoction went on to become their biggest hit, marking the band as a one-hit wonders for life (and for a song used to promote a goddamned Flipper movie, for crying out loud). They're still fairly popular in their native Scotland and Europe, but their future in America is probably non-existent, thanks to this one song.

11. "I Was Made for Loving You" - KISS (Best of) - There are plenty of borderline KISS songs ("Love Gun," "Lick it Up"), but none of them made the mistake of incoporating a quasi-disco melody like "I Was Made for Loving You." Even "Beth" sounds like Gershwin compared to this.

10. "New York, New York" - Ryan Adams (Gold) - I'm cheating on this one, because I'm not that much of an Adams fan but I love Whiskeytown, his former band. I'm also convinced Adams wouldn't have half the mainstream recognition he curently enjoys had not Gold fortuitously come out right around 9/11, allowing radio DJs the country over to latch on to the single. Compared to the good songs on the album ("La Cienega Just Smiled," "Rescue Blues"), and even the average ones, it doesn't hold up.

9. "Long Live Rock" - The Who (The Kids Are Alright) - It's written somewhere (or should be) that songs extolling the virtues of "rock" by name are abominations and should be cast into the fiery pit from whence they came.

8. "Roll the Bones" - Rush (Roll the Bones) - Not the entire song, just that horrible "rap" in the middle of it. I'm a Rush fan from way back (Permanent Waves era), and I've usually gone along with their occasionally ill-advised attempts to branch out musically (letting Lee and/or Lifeson write lyrics, for example), but this was horrendous. Reminded me of rapping Abe Lincoln from Duff Gardens.

7. "Tonight She Comes" - The Cars (Greatest Hits) - Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr made some great music in the late '70s. They were crap live, but I'd put their self-titled debut album and Candy-O up there with the best of the decade. Then Ocasek married swimsuit model Paulina Porizkova and got cocky. "Tonight She Comes" - a hammy, self-indulgent single that is too lazy to even make an effort to mask the double entendre (the video featured a cowgirl riding a giant silver phallus) - was the result.

6. "Chiquita" - ABBA (Gold) - It was a gift, swear to god.

5. "Body Language" - Queen (Hot Space) - Hot Space is a lousy album, and "Body Language," a monotonous ode to getting your groove on, is the worst of the lot ("Calling All Girls" is a close second). By the time this album came out (1982), Queen were entering the doldrums of their career. Sadly, they would only turn it around when Freddie Mercury wrote some of his best stuff while dying of AIDS. Queen remains one of my top 10 favorite all-time bands, which is what makes "Body Language" such a kick in the groin, musically.

4. "Night Time in the Switching Yard" - Warren Zevon (Excitable Boy) - Zevon had perhaps more ups and downs than any artist in memory. When he was on, as with songs like "Desperadoes Under the Eaves" or "Splendid Isolation," he was impossible to top. But for each of those, you'd get a "Long Arm of the Law" or a Mutineer album. "Night Time in the Switching Yard" is partcularly inexplicable, however, coming as it did on one of his otherwise greatest wire-to-wire albums. Even talented artists weren't able to escape the siren's call of the disco guitar groove.

3. "Wild Honey Pie/Revolution 9" - The Beatles (The White Album) - I've always thought of the White Album as a great album buried in another album's worth of filler. I believe if you culled the weaker tracks, you'd have something to rival Sgt. Pepper's or Revolver. As it is, the presence of songs like these two (I couldn't decide which one I hated more) keep the White Album from being one of those rare CDs I can listen to from start to finish.

2. "Hot Stuff" - The Rolling Stones (Black & Blue) - This is what happens when you let Mick determine the musical direction of the group.

1. "Mother" - The Police (Synchronicity) - Andy Summers always got a few token songs to pad out various Police albums. Some were barely tolerable ("Friends" from Message in a Box), and some were actually pretty funny ("Be My Girl - Sally" from Outlandos d'Amour). "Mother," on the other hand, completely threw off the tenuous cohesion of the last Police album. I can't hit the Skip button fast enough to get to "Mrs. Gradenko."