Bad to the Bone
anything by Pearl Jam
Most of the cheesy early Beatles “yeah yeah yeah” stuff.
99% of all Rolling Stones songs.
100% of all Eagles songs.
Neil Young: I honestly don’t understand how anybody likes his music.
Fair warning: Do not watch the film Chungking Express. (I know it’s a Hong Kong film, but Tarantino’s production company gave it a decent US release.) One of the female lead characters is pretty much obsessed with this song, and she plays it loudly and often while at work. Often enough that about a decade after seeing the movie, that factoid leaps to mind when I hear the song or read a comment about it. (The Wiki article says “numerous times.”)
I mean, I kind of like the song, but see how much that stayed with me?
Agreed.
Also anything from David Lee Roth (with or without Van Halen). When he and that stupid screech of his come on, I turn them off.
Much appreciated!
I ***can’t stand ***Led Zeppelin. In my defense, it’s because I was in an unhealthy relationship with a guy who LOVED Zeppelin - has tattoos of them and everything - so anything Zeppelin reminds me of that. But I also really do dislike Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant’s screechy, wailing voice makes my ears bleed.
Round about 1989, I decided to get serious about never hearing Free Bird again.
I can name that tune and change the station in about one and a half notes.
Once I was in a clothing store, being checked out at the register, when it came on. I told the cashier I had to go and I’d come back when it was over…she changed the station for me.
My children are sixteen and twenty-one. They have not, to my knowledge, ever been exposed to Free Bird.
I even have a plan B, in case the song is playing and I can’t leave: I’ll put my fingers in my ears and scream till it ends.
It’s been a nice 24 year streak.
If I never hear “Stairway to Heaven” again it will be too soon. Never been an LZ fan anyway and that one has exceeded my lifetime listening count.
Hate, hate, hate Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove.” Probably one of the best hard rock songs every rung off by a guitar group, stupidest and most irritating lyrics I can imagine. (There are a lot of crappy songs, but they tend to be bad in both music and lyrics - I doubt anyone hums “Muskrat Love” or “Mandy” or “Dancing Queen.”) “China Grove” simultaneously wants to you to get up and boogie while plugging your ears.
I am sure I will get flamed for this but the following three songs I simply cannot listen to and hate with the passion of a 1000 Suns:
- Who let the dogs out? - Not sure but put them back in please.
- Centerfield (put me in coach) - Ugh, love baseball, hate this song.
- Good Virbrations - Beloved by many, loathed by me.
While de gustubus of course, I don’t get how so many people could have heard Stairway enough to hate it. I like the song but I have only heard it when I wanted to. I think I have heard it maybe once or twice when I was not deliberately looking for it.
Yep, and I’ll throw much of Phil Collins and Genesis under that bus too. I loathe everything by Duran Duran. Born in the USA makes me ill as well.
I really hate “Eleanor Rigby.” Fucking depressing. Makes me want to put my head in the oven.
I think you are talking to a bunch of geezers who got over-exposed to Stairway, Freebird and many others in the old-fashioned way: on the radio in the late 1970’s and early 80’s.
lieu and others with the Styx/Journey/Foreigner hate - a few things:
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At my high school, it was “Styx/Journey/REO” - pronounced as one continuous word-thing. But REO Speedwagon was the third part of the Axis of Evil music…
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Boston and Foreigner were lumped with S/J/R described as “Corporate Rock” - but Boston and Foreigner seemed a bit more okay. For me, personally, Junior Walker’s sax solo in Foreigner’s song Urgent is a perfect thing I love listening to.
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Isn’t it weird and hilarious how **Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing **has become a cultural touchpoint? Back in the day, it was a cheesy pop song that was not Muskrat Love abhorrent, but lord knows, it wasn’t good. When it comes on, I look around to see if anyone else squishes their face up with a “really?!” look on it…
Every one of you are dead to me now! Except for Soylent Juicy, I too hate Led Zeppelin. Liked them as a teen but not anymore.
“What is the point /
of even living /
long enough to /
hear the end of this sonnnnng?”
I do hear it infrequently enough to still like it, in the right mood.
Seger (except “Night Moves,” but that never gets airplay anymore), Phil Collins. There used to be a lot more (I was a cool college DJ), but I’ve mellowed.
I find it weirder and hilariouser that commercials will use hard-groovin’ songs whose lyrics are anything but suitable for a commercial pitch.
Like Chevy ads that used “Born in the USA.” Yep, gonna jump in my Chevy and go kill the yellow man…
I’m drawing a blank on one we heard the other night - I think it was in a movie theater ad before ST:ID - that was great music for the car(?) ad but whose lyrics would have been wildly contradictory and inappropriate. Maybe someone else can fill in here.
First, as I’ve often noted, there is no such thing as a universally beloved song. So, no matter what song we say we hate, we’re not being bold iconoclasts.
Next, there are a lot of songs played regularly on most “classic rock” radio stations that immediately make me turn off the radio or change stations- but NOT because they’re bad songs! Rather, there are many I loved the first trillion times I heard them, but which I just don’t ever care to hear again (“Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Layla,” “Hey Jude” and “Let It Be”, for instance).
So, what songs are there that get played all the time on classic rock radio stations that I always loathed and still do? Among them:
“Walk on the Wild Side” by Lou Reed
“Miss You” by the Rolling Stones
“We Are the Champions” by Queen
Every Fleetwood Mac song by Christine McVie
Jack and Diane - Mellencamp
The Joker - Steve Miller
Definitely. It’s a pretty good song if they cut out that awful guitar solo at the end.
“Every Picture Tells a Story” by Rod Stewart. Stewart has really wasted his talent over the years, but this one I hate because I had to hear it all day: there was a Christmas tape in a store where I worked that consisted of this song plus ads, and it played all Christmas season.
Anything by the Steve Miller Band after Steve Miller Five. All of his best-known hits are just plain awful.
Similarly, anything by Kenny Rogers. “The Gambler” is especially stupid; why people feel inspired by a song that out-and-out says you’re better off dead is beyond me.