The first song that comes to mind for me is “I’d Like That” by XTC. I first heard it in Me, Myself and Irene, downloaded it, and fell in love with the song. Great guitar strumming and bass line - perfect music for a country drive in the summer.
But when the bridge comes along, I just cringe:
“I’d smile so much my face would craaaack in twooooo…
and you could fix it with your kisssssssiiiiing gluuuuue…
I’d like thaaat…oh yes I’d liiiiiiiike thaaaaaat…”
It’s like Paul McCartney at his absolute worst.
Are there any other songs that you feel would be truly excellent were it not for a shitty bridge or any other element of the song you feel wrecks it?
“Down With The Sickness” by Disturbed.
Excellent song - until the whole part about his mommy hitting him. Blech.
It’s one of the only songs that is HELPEd by the radio edit.
I have a great one. ‘‘Hush, Hush, Hush’’ by Paula Cole. A haunting, vocally-driven tale about a man dying of AIDS in his father’s arms. Completely and utterly ruined by the bridge, in which some old man starts singing, ‘‘oooooh maybe next time you’ll be Henry the VIII!’’ It completely destroys the mood of the song, and it’s also stupid. This song could have been so great, without that part.
I can’t think of any songs ruined by the bridge at the moment, but the words “silence like a cancer grows” gives me the shivers.
Also, I hate it when good songs, especially by studio purists such as Steely Dan, who should definitely know better, end in a fade-out. End your songs properly, like Squarepusher’s Problem Child, or something!
Everybody Here Wants You - Jeff Buckley. The damned bridge sounds like it belongs to a completely different song. It just jars.
And while I’m at it, Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your own, from U2. That bloody slide guitar in the bridge. Like balls on a dog. Just doesn’t work. Is it even in the same key?
I think that Damien Rice’s “O” is darn near perfect. And I heard the song “Cold Water” from that CD at the end of a movie, and that clinched it for me to pick it up as soon as I could. I hadn’t realized, though, that the movie cut off that song just before the Gregorian Chant started, which completely ruined the song for me. I would love to hear a remix of that song with all that nonsense removed.
That’s not a bridge, that’s a guitar solo. And long guitar solos were standard procedure for guitar bands during that era (though, granted, most bands saved the extended solos for their live performances). A “bridge” is usually a sung section that is not a verse and is not a chorus, and is musically different from either. The bridge is commonly inserted before or after an instrumental section/solo. A good example is in the Doobie Brothers “China Grove” - this part here is the “bridge”:
But every day theres a new thing comin
The ways of an oriental view
The sheriff and his buddies
With their samurai swords
You can even hear the music at night
And though its a part of the lone star state
People dont seem to care
They just keep on lookin to the east
(I don’t know how correct those lyrics are - I just snatched them from a random lyric site)
But on the topic of Rush, my all-time favorite band … they went through a phase in the '80s where they just didn’t seem to know when to end a song. An especially egregious example is the song “Grand Designs” from Power Windows. I really love the song, and it’s a lot of fun to play on the bass. This 5:07 song would have been better as a 3:45 song. But the last minute and a half of the song is just variations on the same riff played over and over and over and over, with Geddy singing “Oh oh oh oh …” over top of it. That’s just one example; they’ve had a number of other songs with the same problem.
Meh, I agree with the quoted poster, love the song except for the screaming-at-mommy bit. OTOH, I disagree with olives’s recommendation and like “Voices Carry” as-is.
…it’s not a bridge, and maybe not even a coda, but the end of Chicago’s “Hard to say I’m sorry” kills the song…you’re dancing a slow song and instead of ending with a chance to kiss her or look her in the eyes you start dancing away…
The Killers’ “When you were young” might have been one of the greatest pop singles of this decade if not for the part after the breakdown where the chorus comes back and then there’s a one-off jokey, stupid, “jklol” falsetto wail of the words “talks like a gentleman” that turns it into a sub-Weird Al fart joke.
Me too. It’s so melodramatic. And the video was awesome. She’s a cool street punk inexplicably dating this rish guy who keeps trying to make her over. But, no way man, she’s not gonna conform to society’s stifling rules. She’s gonna stick to her indie street cred and wear her funky ear thing and overly bleached spikey do…
Speaking of which, The Trees seems pretty empty for a 5~ minute song. I know there’s scads of fairly popular songs with an intro(and/or/verse)-extended musical solo-outro(closing verse) in the late 60’s-early 80s era, some of which manage to work (Echoes and Light My Fire, for instance,) but most don’t*, and The Trees is no exception. Could it have killed them to add another verse in there, the story’s pretty sparse.
*Even by bands I like such as Led Zeppelin (this format made Mody Dick a lesser work) and Pink Floyd (sure, there’s Echoes, but Interstellar Overdrive = boring.) While we’re at it, ditto for YYZ. I haven’t heard Innagaddadavita enough to know if the extended interlude adds or subtracts from the work.
To me, that’s kind of a different case. During that era of Rush music, the band was taking something of a “show, don’t tell” approach to their storytelling songs, where they sort of treated the songs as little “audio movies”, painting a picture with sound rather than paint (ala Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”). In this case, the instrumental section attempts to first create the impression of a peaceful forest; the 5/4 guitar solo section depicts the growing tensions between the Oaks and Maples, and then the intense, odd time signature progression that follows depicts the outright conflict between the two.
They tried to do something similar with Jacob’s Ladder on the next album. It was originally intended to be an instrumental number that depicted a thunderstorm building up to a climax and then breaking, followed by the sun peeking through the clouds. The sparse lyrics were added as an afterthought, when they decided that a lot of people wouldn’t “get it” as a straight instrumental.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to in YYZ, unless you mean the laid-back, half-time section in the middle. My biggest problem with YYZ (aside from its being insanely difficult to play on bass) is that it’s kind of repetitious.