So here’s your chance to go against the grain, swim against the tide, or otherwise [verb] against the [noun]. What songs do you secretly or not-so-secretly enjoy which are otherwise mostly reviled or ridiculed? (It has to be honest, not ironic, enjoyment).
I’ll leave off with a bit of delight. It’s not afternoon yet, but close enough:
A Horse With No Name
Wildfire
Puff The Magic Dragon
Muskrat Love (I love the tape FF sounds used for muskrat dialog)
Ride 'Em Cowboy (Paul Davis. When I was digitizing it, a friend laughed at what he thought was the song’s cloying sweetness. I quoted Dr Furter: “I didn’t record it for YOU!”)
If you non-ironically enjoy those songs (especially the first four) I’m surprised you think Afternoon Delight sucks-- seems like it would be right in your wheelhouse. Guess there’s no accounting for taste.
Some songs, such as ‘Freebird’, I think suffer from ‘Stairway to Heaven Syndrome’: they’re (mostly) universally acknowledged to be good songs, but are disliked only because they were egregiously overplayed in the past.
Pretty much the usual suspects that show up in “music you hate” threads:
Afternoon Delight Muskrat Love (derpy lyrics not withstanding) The Night Chicago Died (regardless of there being no official east side of Chicago) All I want for Christmas is You My Heart Will Go On (the whole soundtrack to Titanic is gorgeous) Achy Breaky Heart Most yacht rock
Wow, that brings back memories. I was five years old, and that single was printed on the back of a cereal box (Super Sugar Crisp?). It was actual grooved plastic laminated on the box itself or something. I was amazed that a record could be printed onto a box that way. My parents removed it from the box for me and I played it over and over and over on our old-fashioned console record player, until either it wore out or my parents secretly threw it out while I was asleep.
What?!? Come on. Are you going to tell me next there’s no ‘South Detroit’, as mentioned in the Journey song 'Don’t Stop Believing"?
Now, for me I hate Freebird. I think it, for lack of a better descriptor, “insists upon itself”. But I also know I dislike Skynyrd because a very good friend of mine loved them and their whole southern rebel attitude, and he hated Neil Young and always gave me shit for liking him. (A southern man don’t need him around anyhow!).
I do acknowledge it is a well made song, and have softened on it over the years. But it is yet another song about fear of commitment. I think we could have a huge thread on just songs like that.
It’s a combination of things. For me, it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for 70s processed pop bands. It was the “let’s write a pop song for am radio about SEX! So daring!”. Rockets as a metaphor for sex is so…cheap. Like using a slide whistle. It just seemed to be “phony”. I think Chevy Van is a less phony song. But there’s no accounting for taste.
One more: I unironically LOVE Wings’ Silly Love Songs. And what’s wrong with that?
I wonder sometimes if it would have a better reputation if the Monkees had made it as Kirschner intended. Or would it have ruined the Monkees forever?
And I love all of MacArthur Park. I’m actually not sure why it is so hated. Probably how seriously it takes itself, and its seven minute run time? I was so young then when it came out that when I watched The Molly Maguires I said, “Hey! It’s the singer!”
