Hey, I love the end of Lovely Rita.
I’ll second Sweet Child O’ Mine. The ending is terrible, and it’s so damn long.
My wife hates the rocking part in My Sharona.
I hate all of Led Zepplin’s* Kashmir*. Try this the next time you hear it: Sing these words, “Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive Dull Repetitive DUH DUH DUH DA DA DUH DA!”
My wife hates me for that. And many other reasons.
The song John Wayne Gacy Jr by Sufjan Stevens gives me a WTF at the end. Most of the song does a fairly good job of portraying a proper reaction to the story of John Wayne Gacy. The music evokes just the right “How is something this horrible even possible” feeling the lyrics are meant to communicate. Okay, good. Wouldn’t be my favorite song, but I’ll accept it.
Then at the very end, in the last couple of lines, Stevens’ lyrics imply (on my interpretation anyway) that all of us are really just like Gacy in that we are not morally perfect. Stevens is apprently relying on the common (at least in the Evangelical circles I am familiar with) sentiment that all sin is equal in the eyes of God.
But I mean… come on. Maybe I lie sometimes, or maybe I fail to follow through on commitments sometimes, or whatever. Sure, I’ll even accept there is some kind of profound moral fault to be found in me that leads to these problems. But Gacy tortured raped and killed 39 boys and young men. To say that we’re all “just like him” because of some basic moral imprefection we’re all supposed to share is to trivialize and maybe even make a mockery of the profoundly evil character of Gacy’s acts and the profound suffering he forced on his victims.
I love Sufjan Stevens. But Fuck You Sufjan Stevens.
-FrL-
Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith takes a left turn near the end that usually has me punching the skip button on the iPod.
I’ll desecrate another sacred relic: The Beatles’ Hey Jude. God Damn, the 4+ minute outro is annoying. I dislike overly repetitious songs, and the second half of this one seems made just to torture me.
“Kashmir” is my favorite Zepplin song - I prefer that to everyone else’s fav “Stairway To Heaven.”
But for a song that falls into the OP’s topic, I nominate two of Liz Phair’s from Exile in Guyville- “Strange Loop” and “Johnny Sunshine”. Both start out great, and then I’m ready to move on. I especially dislike “JS”'s shift from the faster driving guitar with her normal signing voice to the slower strumming and falsetto.
Rage against the Machine’s “Kiling in the Name of” is very nearly the perfection of the art of revolutionary power rock…
…except for the damn “guitar” solo in the middle that sounds like bathing day in the crazy cat lady’s house next door. Really truly awful and out of place with the rest of the song. Remastering to replace the segment with a Tiny Tim ukelele segment would improve it a thousandfold, that’s how horrid it is.
I’m sorry, what?
Hold your tongue! 
I’ll mention Ween’s “Don’t Get Too Close To My Fantasy”, which is a beautiful song right up until the end when it suddenly turns into a Queen homage or something with Numerous Harmonious Vocals that go on for a very long time. I hate that part of the song, ruins it for me. But every other Ween fan I’ve ever spoken to tells me I’m wrong, so there you go.
Without that outro, it would be a truly elegant and perfect song. I’ve always thought the ridiculous outro ruined and shat all over it.
As long as we’re being musically sacrilegious in here, I am quite fond of the Yes song “Your Move/All Good People”. Up until the “All Good People” part starts up, that is. I wish they’d done maybe 8 bars past the drum windup leading into it, then faded out during the second repeat of “so satisfied I’m on my way…”, that’s about where I get tired of “good people”.
Taking everyone back a few years…
The intro to Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress by The Hollies is so cool–a beautifully clean picked bit, then the real song starts and it’s stupid. IMHO.
You should try the Wilson Pickett version of Hey Jude. It clocks in at about 4 minutes. The outro is about a minute and features a killer horn section and a very young Duane Allman on guitar.
That line in the song drives me nuts as well, but not because of the sentiment. I understand that Sufjan is a Christian artist, and the concept that all sin is equally bad and damning in “sin” terms (in the eyes of God and one’s relationship with God) is central to the faith. What drives me nuts is that Sujfan has to BEAT US OVER THE HEAD with this message by flat-out SAYING it at the end, when it should simply be implicit and told by the metaphor of the song. It’s like that Pitchfork joke about Travis Morrisson’s thinly-veiled political allegory “Song for the Orca” should just end with the couplet, “That Orca represents the United States/On Nine-Elevvvvvvvvven!” - but that’s what Sufjan actually DOES.
Most of the songs on the album Bat out of Hell are great – but just linger too long. Too many repetitions.
The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young,” a great rock anthem for disenfranchised youth until the last ten seconds, when suddenly the tempo doubles and the song goes into an echo chamber with a quickly-fading “TAKEITIT’SYOURSTAKEITIT’SYOURSTAKEITIT’SYOURSTAKEITIT’SYOURS”.
Really, I think fade out is a clear sign the artist couldn’t figure out a proper ending. You gotta stick the landing, man!
Yes, that’s exactly right. And it’s a problem that seems to be shared by almost all Christian music.* In fact, I’d dearly like to hear of any exceptions to this.
Stevens, at least, in most cases, makes his Christian references in his songs (at least on Illinoise, the only album I’ve heard) somewhat hard to decode. That’s something at least.
-FrL-
*I should note that Stevens prefers not to be identified as a member of the class of “Christian artists.” But many of his songs do intentionally presuppose Christian doctrines.
Maybe, you’ve got to admit that it worked well for the video.
Odd. It’s the only song by Skynyrd that I actively like. In spite of it’s being a punchline, I love the guitar solo.
My nomination is more obscure. “Lowlands of Holland” on “Hark! The Village Wait” by Steeleye Span is a beautiful, uptempo song of love and death which, for some reason, has two guitar breaks of overly loud chords drowning out a pretty tasty lead solo in the background. It doesn’t completely ruin the song, but it certainly lessens it. Thing is, there are rare pressings of the album where the lead is in front, and the chords are mixed way back, and it’s lovely. I don’t know what they were thinking. It’s kind of the folk-rock equivalent of “Let It Be.”
Guns n’ Roses’ “Paradise City” has a very repetitious ending that could be pared down by a couple minutes. The same goes for “Alive” by Pearl Jam and “Slow Ride” by Foghat. “Freebird” (a decent but not favorite song) is the most egregious offender in this category.