The obvious candidate for me is Spandau Ballet’s (shut up) True (shut up); a veritable classic of the 1980s, but why oh why did they stick a gawdawful sax solo in it? It’s so incongruous and filleresque it makes me wonder if they did it as some sort of bet or were feeling sorry for the saxophonist or something.
Or Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf; the 23 seconds of noise you have to skip to get to the good stuff.
Also Echoes by Pink Floyd; the four cocking minutes (!) of random squawks between the jam section and when it builds back up. Dogs does this too.
Disturbed’s “Down With the Sickness” - Unlike the radio edit, the album version not only doesn’t have the swearing bleeped out, but also contains a screaming rant in the middle of the song against his mother and her years of abuse. It really doesn’t work, and breaks up the flow of the song completely. I’d love to edit the version I have on my iPod to cut out the screamy bit.
Wilco’s “Less Than You Think” - The song is 15 minutes long, and the last 11 minutes or so are basically an electronic hum. Jeff Tweedy said how he knows most people will hate it, but he finds it cathartic and interesting when he sits down to listen to it. At one point, I recall reading a comment from him that said something to the effect of it making the album a different experience for each listener, each time, depending on when or if you skip the rest of the song. I understand his point but I’ve found that Filter’s similar experiments in long trailing-off songs (“Miss Blue”, “The 4th”) work better for me.
I started a thread about this a while ago as well.
Ozzy’s **No more Tears **has that stupid Beatlesque turn in it. Ruins the song.
David Gilmore’s **Murder **morphs into a vastly inferior ending. Quite a few of Pink Floyd’s songs take these detours
One song I where actually LIKED that sort of thing happening was Roger Hodgeson’s Had a Dream. I think it worked in that song
Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N Roses is one of my favorite songs but it degenerates badly at the end when it just becomes random jamming and “Where do we go now?” crap. I know they wrote the song very quickly but they should have spent more time and included more actual lyrics.
You’ve heard my latest record,
It’s been on the radio.
Ah, it took me years to write it,
They were the best years of my life.
It was a beautiful song.
But it ran too long.
If you’re gonna have a hit,
You gotta make it fit–
So they cut it down to 3:05.
On Duffy’s “Mercy” when she does that little half scream “yes I do!” and then later just before the bridge or solo or whatever and she says “break it down”. I know singers do this kind of thing all the time (what is the word for that, anyway)when they’re, uh, gettin’ down, but it sounds especially forced and lame coming from this little white chick. I really do like this song and Duffy herself, but those two parts make me cringe.
Okay, I don’t really love this song, but the ending (i.e. last 3/4) of Hey Jude. It would be one of their better of their huge hits* if they just kept it to a simple 2 1/2 minute pop song.
I’m not a fan of their huge hits, more of a fans of their lesser hits.
I presume you mean the ‘Mary’ part in the middle, and not the intro (with the various sound effects, including the baby cry & the old man going ‘No-No-No’) - and in that case I agree.
OK, I dislike…well, the entire middle section ‘jam’ on Peter Frampton’s ‘Do you feel’ (including the Vox-box deal), but I do like the very short 2minute Rolling Stone’s song ‘Can you here me knocking’ (what Jazz solo at the end), and the elegant, terse Elton John song ‘Funeral for a Friend’ (what long winded gothic organ intro do you mean), and the Chamber Brother’s totally tight rocker ‘Time has come today’, which of course never had any sort of random delay effects in the middle…
(thanks to mp3 editors…yes, just give me the rocking bits and forget the artsy stuff).
Oh, HELL no…the only long song I can think of that I think goes on too long is CCR’s Proud Mary.
And ‘short’ songs are 4-6 minutes, in my world.
One of my favourite songs (which I am listening to, now) is 10:31 and except for a few seconds around 5-6 minutes (where it goes into what feels like an outro), not a second of that is wasted.
