It’s not quite the same thing as what’s being described, but the fake radio stuffed into the entire Songs for the Deaf album by Queens of the Stone Age was cute for exactly one play through. Now I want to scream every time I just want to listen to it but have to suffer through that awful fake radio shit to get to it.
I should just use an audio editor to cut it all out and never listen to it on original CD again.
U2’s “Unforgettable Fire,” which just may be my favorite song ever, is my favorite despite that horrible cheesy synthasized drum part in the middle. The rest of the song is an ageless, timeless, classic…and then there’s that part.
In “Blame Game” on Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”, the long drawn out end part involving the Chris Rock dialogue was funny the first time, but its just ridiculously long and boring every time after that. The “that’s a really good song, except for that part” of the OP turns into “that’s a really good album, except for that part”.
“Don’t You Worry 'Bout a Thing” is my favorite Stevie Wonder song, even despite the weird dialogue, which doesn’t even make sense with the song (it would work better with “He’s Misstra Know-it-All”).
It’s hardly a classic but the poster child of this for me (a child of the 80s being in my late teens when it came out) is Singing In My Sleep by Semisonic which has this terrible 3-3-4 note organ/synthy bit running through it, that does not fit the song at all. Without it, it would have been an agreeable rock song with a hooky chorus. Instead, I spend the entire song going “Why? Why? Why?” every time that 10 note motif plays. Thankfully, it was a minor hit at best and the number of times I hear it in the wild is pretty limited.
I wholeheartedly concur. Most of the time they would try out stuff that didn’t seem like it would fit, I loved it. In this instance it just didn’t click for me.
Rage Against the Machine “Killing in the Name Of” has an unlistenable screechy guitar solo that kills the song. It edits out nicely in Audacity though.
My opinion on this will probably go over about as well as pushing Gandhi down a stairwell, but I’ve never liked Joni Mitchell’s pitching her voice and laughing at the outro of “Big Yellow Taxi”. That’s fine to stick on a B-side as an alternate version for fans who think it’s charming and cute, but IMO she ruined a brilliant song and performance.
Every boy-band or crooner R&B song where they have a “talking” bridge of “ooh baby, here’s how I’m going to love you” instructions. Squicky dive lounge pillow talk? In my peanut butter?
The Beck song Novacane is pretty enjoyable (for me) until about the 3:20 mark, when suddenly a bunch of screechy distortion blurts out, deafening anyone unlucky enough to be listening with headphones on.
I’ve also noticed in about a hundred new rap songs, the same bunch of dudes show up and start shouting “Hey! Hey!” in the background.
ETA: I just went looking for an example of the dudes shouting “Hey! Hey!” and came across this amusing video - I guess I’m not alone
All this talk of editing songs (I use Sound Studio myself) reminds me of one song I wish it were possible to edit: Big Audio Dynamite’s E=MC2.
The song uses audio clips from a movie as emphasis for the lyrics. That by itself isn’t bad, but they sound like they were copied from the film by using a hand held cassette recorder that was located somewhere in the room where the film was playing on a crappy 1960s era portable TV. Combine that with the accents of the characters in the movie and all you get is muddled mush for the most part.
I wish it was possible to remove them, because I love the sound of the song. But the samples always take me out of the “mood”.
I feel the same way about the last couple of seconds of Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying.” Man, after that epic 11-minute song, I want it to end with satisfying finality, not peter out with a goofy moment.
“No no no!” all the Led Zep fans howl in unison, “don’t you see, that’s the perfect ending it’s funny it subverts your expectations and [incoherent droning]”