Say You, Say Me by Lionel Ritchie is a ballad, except the middle part is an up-tempo rock song, for whatever reason. The abrupt changes in tempo are grating.
Wow! Cool! I (respectfully) disagree with mr. jp on both his nominations!
Think of a small child who hasn’t learned to say “R” sounds yet, kind of comes out “ow-a”, but one syllable instead of two. Such newly verbal slips and slurs are also found in adults who are, like, totally fucked up.
I love the way she chants out “G-L-O-Ow-why-yay!” ‘cause it’s just so Rock n’ Roll in a “I don’t know what the fuck 'm saying but I’m here to party” kind of way.
The “ah” thing makes the song! It’d be a good song without, but the “ah” thing makes it punch.
. . . and now the stage is bare and I’m standing there with emptiness all around
and if you won’t come back to me, then they can bring the curtain down
My Nomination:
Supergrass Evening of the Day when they sing:
“If she’s not on that 3:15 then I’m gonna know what sorrow means”
It is meant as a deliberate allusion to the song “All the Way Home” from Spinal Tap (by whatever earlier version of Tap performed the song).
In songwriting, whenever “literary allusion” calls on another song, and the specific allusion is related in the form of a direct quote- I just think it calls for some serious justification on the part of the writer of the new song.
There’s got to be a valid artistic goal in quoting the other song, and the execution has got to be extremely effective. Otherwise, you just come off like a bad lounge singer winking at the audience “Hey, folks, I think you might know this one!”
The repeated word “Style” along with the beat-box bit in Regina Spektor’s “Chemo Limo”. I know that the vocal gymnatics are what Regina does but, in that song, it just grates on my verses.
Cut the long guitar solo from “Free Bird” and you have a pretty good song.
I always thought that was the best part of the song.
You do know it was dubbed in later, and that the original hit didn’t have the slow middle part in it, don’t you? If you fish around for it, you can find copies of the original version.
WTF?? I coulda sworn Annie X-Max’s post referenced Blinded by the Light, not Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
Sorry, the midsection of Paradise has always been there as far as I know.
I’ve used my audio editor to edit a few songs. The whole spoken part of Donovan’s Atlantis I clipped. And the part about a Pterodactyl being a sort of stork lookin’ bat from Nervous Norvus’s Ape Call I snipped. It made my life slightly easier as those bits always annoyed me when they came up in the rotation.
Nothing on the American Life album is really meant for general consumption, but two songs really take the cake: “Mother and Father” is a wryly confessional song with some soul music-inspired wailing near the end that could have been terrible and isn’t, but the farking rap in the middle ruins everything with clunky, stupid lyrics and strange, detached production.
Secondly, "X-Static Process"is another track that had great potential - except for the very last line, which has delivery, lyrics and accompaniment that makes it feel like a campfire sing-along. The worst part is that I am convinced that if she had spent just TEN mre minutes working on that song with Monte, it could have been 100% enjoyably listenable.
Shame, Esther. Shaaaaaaaaame.
My nomination in the Morello category would have to be “Original Fire” from Audioslave’s recent Revelations. It’s a great song with a monster rhythm track, and then Morello contributes a particularly dweedly-screechy solo that almost ruins it for me (I still love the track). Of course, I was never a Rage Against the Machine fan, having come to Audioslave via Chris Cornell and Soundgarden, so I’m still working on getting used to Morello. It didn’t seem to be that way on the earlier Audioslave albums, so I actually looked up a few samples of Rage online to see if that’s the way he always plays or not (maybe not always, but often enough). He can play melodically (witness the nice little “wah-wah” rhythm on “One and the Same” from the same album, which also includes a solo that oddly enough seems to meld with the rest of the track better than the solo does from “Original Fire”).
Anyway. Sorry for going on, but it’s the first thing that occurred to me upon seeing the subject. I almost started a thread about Morello specifically.
I gotta disagree with you on “Heaven Beside You.” That song’s pretty much perfect the way it is (when it’s not hacked down into the radio edit.) Without the separate chorus riff, Cantrell can’t launch into the solos.
And “Swing on This” was on Jar of Flies, not Alice in Chains (also known as Tripod or the dog album.) I will agree that it’s the weakest song on the EP, though.
AiC has other songs where the main riff gives way to a separate chorus riff, like “Bleed the Freak” and “Angry Chair.”
A great example of a perfect song that gets ruined by a very annoying part is Clocks by Coldplay. Specifically, around 2/3 of the way through, the beautiful, haunting refrain (with its fused piano and vocals) abruptly switches to, well, something else, something most definitely not beautiful. This change corresponds to the lyric “And nothing else compares”. What a shame. It could have been a perfect track.
Then cut the rest and you’ve got a great song. 
And, koeeoaddi, I’m with your about that horrible bit of “poetry” in “Nights in White Satin.”
The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” might be a decent song if you cut out the eleventy-million instances of “woo-woo”.
I think Morello is a great writer of riffs and a terrible soloist. I’ve never seen another guitar player who is so extremely good at one while being so bad at the other. He creates interesting sounds in some songs, but usually doesn’t manage to make the solos fit the song. He plays scales and goes nowhere a lot of the time.
“Wild Thing” by the Troggs. I heard it a while back for the first time in years and years; I was in the car, and I cranked it up. I was rocking; ROCKING, I tell you! WILD THING! You make my HEART SING!
And then, tragically, my rocking was cut short by a freaking flute solo. Who thought this was a good idea?
Thanks for the correction, bj regarding the CD’s - of course you’re right. Regarding Heaven - that’s my point: it starts out as a solid boogie-type song with a cool Buffalo Springfield “For What it’s Worth” vibe, then gets much more dramatic. It works as a song - especially as an AiC song - but if they stayed with more of the main riff’s vibe, it could’ve been a crossover classic to a much larger degree. In other words, in this particular instance, I would’ve preferred it if Cantrell didn’t launch - he is my favorite grunge guitarist by far, but I wish he applied more traditional songcraft to their writing. It’s like when Soundgarden got to Superunknown - by that time, they really tried to write self-contained songs, so Fell on Black Days and Black Hole Sun, etc., stand on their own as much stronger songs vs. earlier stuff. Same with Sad But True and Enter Sandman on Metallica’s Black Album - producer Bob Rock got them to focus on songcraft much more, not just stringing together really cool riffs. I love the early stuff, but the Black Album stuff are the songs that crossed over and will endure in most folks’ minds…
It’s an ocarina, sir.
I hear there was a rumor that there was a good song that included this annoying part: what could this possibly be? I don’t see how any song that includes this part could be annoying.
Then again, classic rock stations suffer from a similar form of obliviousness: they are aware of the song but seem to think it doesn’t include this part. Up until the early 90s I was unaware of any song that had this part in it, let alone annoying songs.
Really? Think any of them would be interested in an otherwise pristine 35 year old vinyl copy? It’s got a handy trench right before the offending bit. 