I’m listening to Dire Straits’ “Making Movies”. It could be my favorite Dire Straits album, but of course it has “Les Boys”. I would listen more often to the album if it hadn’t that song, a turd thrown in a delicious pudding. It’s a horribly homophobic song told from the outside perspective of a smug straight cis-male- “Les boys are glad to be gay”. Yeah, Mark, why shouldn’t they, does every gay person have to succumb to ridicule like your song and from society in general and be miserable like it’s supposed to be? I hate this song. I cannot grasp the fact that it’s on the same album as one of the most beautiful rock ballads ever, “Romeo And Juliet”.
I know, I could easily skip the song, but I have one special OCD (not any other in my life): to play albums completely, like they were meant to be heard. It probably comes from starting listening to music on vinyl when it was too much of a drag to skip songs.
Do you have other albums with almost only great songs, but one massive stinker?
Never was fond of the song “Oh Daddy” on the Fleetwood Mac album, Rumours, but it certainly didn’t ruin the album for me. It’s one of my favorites. I just grit my teeth a little through that one.
Now for a Who song that lowers the album it’s on, “A Legal Matter” is a good pick. “Sorry I got you pregnant, have fun raising that kid on your own!” isn’t a good look even by the standards of '60s rockers.
The “Magic Bus” album really isn’t a regular Who album, rather a shoddy compilation of singles, B-sides, album tracks and other obscure tracks for the US market. It was even marketed misleadingly as “The Who On Tour” (it says so on the very cover) though there wasn’t a single live recording on it. It’s a curiosity. Of course I have it.
I rather like Seamus. It reminds me of seeing that Mademoiselle Nobs sequence in the Pompeii movie. It is just a nice contrast to the other stuff, and a proper prelude to the immensity of the next song.
The one I really do not like is Money. Never did. It just feels wrong for its album.
Deep Purple’s terrific Mk III album ‘Burn’ has a massive stinker in ‘A’200’.
In a similar vein, Rush’s tremendous ‘Signals’ has a futile, messy exercise in ‘Countdown’.
That both of these are instrumentals that are the last song of their respective albums is coincidental. I like instrumental music. But I do feel the last songs should be especially strong tracks, just like the first songs, and this is pretty much a standard structure.
I’m just not sure what could ever follow The Great Gig in the Sky. Perhaps it was best to clear the air with something completely different. In addition, since one is flipping the disc anyway, the moment for a smooth segue may have been lost. (I know I have experienced that with A Fever You Can’t Sweat out by Panic! at the Disco, where there is a buildup of tension at the end of the last song on side 1, which abruptly breaks quite awesomely with the beginning of the next song. But that track starts off side 2. So the tension doesn’t get resolved until after you flip the disc, which ruins the moment.)
I guess The Great Gig in the Sky, in a digital format, could have been followed by something like Brain Damage except somehow even better, but what would be worthy followup to an entire album side about a person’s complete birth, life, and death?
The first time I heard Mother I would probably have agreed, but it has grown on me over the years and now I actually rather like it.
Agree with the OP on Les Boys. What was Knopfler thinking?! There is homophobic language in Money for Nothing as well of course, but I always took that as being in an ironic fashion as it seems like it’s a dig at those who would use the terms to describe musicians. But I could be wrong.
