Blondie’s Rapture was the first mainstream rap! Wiki cite that confirms what I’ve heard and read elsewhere (search the page for Rapture). However idiotic it was, it was a breakthrough.
At the time I found it amusing, silly, and enjoyably different. Debbie’s rap sounded like it was improvised live. Not that this nerdy east coast white boy knew anything from rap in 1980 … or since then.
To the OP, my song annoyance is when they throw in sirens, car horns, or car crash noises. There days I pretty much only listen to music in the car, and these are quite distracting when I’m driving.
So she’s to blame for this horrible, neverending genre of crap I have to endure now? You can’t even find a place to go dancing anymore that isn’t rap or hip-hop (both of which are unlistenable, IMO)
And yet, it was, and is, the song I came in to post. Even at the time I thought it was stupid in and of itself, and stupidly rendered, a self-serving and exploitive move that made me think much less of of Blondie.
Most of the songs on Poe’s album Haunted. I really like some of them, but it seems like frigging all of them have conversations - a father and daughter or an answering machine message - over part of them. I get that it’s supposed to tie in to her brother’s book (I’ve never read it, however) but God it’s irritating. That CD is pretty much my sole motivation for finding some sort of audio recorder/editor just so I never have to hear those damn conversations again. (Any suggestions?)
I for one am grateful Blondie never took itself as seriously as some people appear to have. They were a great, fun, pop band. But they weren’t the first group to have mainstream success with a rap song. The Sugarhill Gang broke into the top 40 with “Rapper’s Delight.”
As much as I dislike Poe, I’ll be nice and answer your question anyway.
By far the most recommended freeware audio editor out there is Audacity. You’ll want to use its phase cancellation feature to remove any vocals/voices you don’t like. Here is a helpful video tutorial on the subject.
OpalCat, I agree that Sturgeon’s Law applies to Rap (and all other pop genres). I don’t go clubbing and I can’t dance (don’t ask me![sup]1[/sup]), but I do like to hear something different now and again.
[sup]1[/sup]No really, don’t. You don’t want to see this!! Not enough eyeball bleach in the world …
Did you get a chance to listen? I don’t have that album with me, but I do have an old acoustic version. He sings “very” in a sarcastic way, which tells me they made the change for radio stations and weren’t happy about it. I think it’s better with the cursing.
There’s a loop of chopped-up words in the runout groove prior to the dog whistle. Sounds like one of them singing “Never could see any other way” in an irritating voice. I forgot all about it, but it adds nothing and takes away from the ending, same as Her Majesty does on Abbey Road.
Three times in the whole song is hardly a f*ckfest now, is it? Try listening to Eminem or someone and he’ll beat that count before the first chorus.
In any case, the “very” version sounds like a filler word put in to make the line scan - something that’s a pet hate of mine. Don’t put in the word “just” or “like” or “very” or “kinda” - rewrite the damn line so it scans without the filler!
I want to say that Limp Bizkit has a song that actually has a line whose only purpose is to give you the running count for how many times they’ve said f*ck up until that point, and it was well into the double digits by then.
I’ve never been a big fan of Electric Light Orchestra. I liked them even less after learning that they actually sing, *Don’t bring me dow-own…Groos, when I and millions of other listeners thought they were saying Bruce. Why the singer should be addressing an acquaintance named Bruce was a mystery to me, but it makes more sense than just sticking a nonsense word in there.
I know this is rank heresy (and will probably result in my being hounded off the Boards) but my nomination would be Whole Lotta Love. Possibly the greatest riff in rock history leading into a superb, timeless rock anthem with great performaces all round… and then it just disintegrates into nothing but sound effects and the sound studio equivalent of aimless doodling. The entire section (and it goes on a while) says nothing except ‘we couldn’t think where the song should go from here, so here’s some pointless messing around with filters and echo units’. I consider myself a Zep fan, but really, would it have killed them to actually, you know, write a complete song?
However, it’s possible the OP was after smaller, finer details that mar otherwise good songs, rather than lengthy sections. There’s a good example from the 70s ‘progressive rock’ era. Going For The One by Yes was a major success for the band, and went a long way to consolidating their broader appeal. I like the song very much, and as an ‘epic’ piece of prog rock bombast it’s about as good as the genre gets with some glorious work by uber-guitarist Steve Howe. However, the third verse is very hard to love: “Now the verses I’ve sung don’t add much weight to the story in my head / So I’m thinking I should go and write a punch line / But theyre so hard to find in my cosmic mind / So I think Ill take a look out of the window.” Appalling lyrics by any standard, even prog rock standards. They are just Jon Anderson drawing attention to the fact that he couldn’t think of anything worthwile, and saying (in effect) that the lyrics up to that point have been a waste of time and we are twits for having bothered to listen to them.
I also hate the ‘jokey’ part in the Message In A Bottle fade where Sting changes ‘Sending out an SOS’ to ‘Sending out an Esso Blue’.
I will add **Gang of Four’s Love Like Anthrax ** - I find this song to be haunting, powerful and rocking - but once you’ve heard the 1 minute and about 12 seconds of screeching, painful guitar feedback at the beginning once, you really don’t need to hear it again…
Not that this nerdy east coast white boy knew anything from rap in 1980 … or since then.