A while back, I wrote a post about music videos I liked. I'd been meaning to do something like that again anyway, just because it's fun, and then I was reading Fark this morning and found this thread on bad song lyrics. First of all, you should read the thread. It's got some great examples of truly wretched poetic license, but the best parts are the posts where people explain just how angry they get when they hear some of this drivel.
This time around, the YouTube Awards looks through my music collection for the worst offenders of sub-par wordsmithy (yes, I'm being ironic by making up words), bad music, and bad everything, and links them to videos where ever possible. And last time, commenter Krista went above and beyond by submitting her own collections of YouTube nominations and it was awesome. So you should all do that.
Worst use of woefully incorrect speech pattern found in common parlance: Imogen Heap: Clear the Area
"But your eyes
Tell a whole nother story"
A whole nother? A whole nother? Are you kidding? That offends me on every level. That's right up there with irregardless*. And the sad thing is I really like the song. It's a gorgeous song. It's a beautiful song. It absolutely would not suffer at all if she sang "A whole other" instead. This isn't poetic license, this isn't flow, this is bad English at work. And even the people who transcribe the lyrics are annoyed, because they made the corrections themselves.
The video for this one is bad. The first verse is cut off and it's some guy with a camera at a concert so it sounds like it's being played through a tin can. Sorry.
*Pointless aside: In high school, I had a boyfriend who prided himself on being extremely smart, and most importantly, smarter than me. And then he used irregardless in a sentence one day. I called him on it, and he thought it was correct. And then I laughed at him. We don't speak anymore.
Worst pandering to the audience for undeserved applause: Art Garfunkel: A Heart In New York
Twice a week, I go to tumbling practice. My train starts underground, toils through the downtown stops, and then emerges victorious into the light in the Sunset district, where the first thing to greet my eyes is this. It's a really impressive mural, and I'd love it, except the artist decided to paint in a street sign referencing a nearby street. And it seems like every city mural I see does this. I hate this. There is no reason to put a street sign in this painting. None. And there are plenty of reasons no to. First of all, it's text. The eye is drawn to it, and away from the rest of the piece. Out of this whole painting spanning multiple hundreds of feet, the focal point is the single most boring bit. Also, it's a cheap, unskilled way to introduce context. It's like the artist is afraid that no one will recognize the area, even after all his hard work, so he puts in a street sign just to be sure. In this particular work, there is no danger of that. In a more general sense, if you're hiring a mural painter to do a context specific piece of work and he needs to put a street sign in so that people recognize the area, hire someone else. Because that guy has no business painting city murals.
The video I linked to is a clip from Simon & Garfunkel's Concert in the Park. This was a huge, landmark event. In Central Park. And they had the nerve to play this song, the lyrics of which are as follows:
New york, to that tall skyline I come, flyin in from london to your door
New york, lookin down on central park
Where they say you should not wander after dark
New york, like a scene from all those movies
But youre real enough to me, but theres a heart
A heart that lives in new york
A heart in new york, a rose on the street
I write my song to that city heartbeat
A heart in new york, love in her eye, an open door and a friend for the night
New york, you got money on your mind
And my words wont make a dimes worth a difference, so heres to you new york
There was no reason for this song to even have been written. Everyone writes songs about New York, and everyone has done it better than this. This looks like it belongs on a greeting card or a tombstone. That bolded bit is, predictably, where the audience bursts into applause. Why? Because it's about Central Park. Where the concert is. Where the audience is. It's not a good line. It looks like a filler line, actually. There is nothing in this song that hasn't been said thousands of times before, and if it's the instrumentation you're after, look no further than The Boxer. Same album, same concert, same general idea, but better.
Wikipedia says the blame for this waste of song writing effort belongs squarely at the door of Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle. Guys, what were you thinking?
Worst "the band has failed me" moment I've ever experienced as a fan: "Metallica": St. Anger
Metallica was the first metal band I was ever into. I was introduced to them when I was about thirteen, and I really loved them. I bought all their albums and I wore out one of their tapes (yes, tape) and then I bought it again on CD. I was all about Metallica in my teen years and so I know a bit of fan trivia that is relevant here.
Firstly, this band was getting steadily better with every album they put out. They got better and better recording engineers and as a consequence they had three albums which encapsulated collections of great songs with amazing recording quality. The sound was heavy but clean and it showcased some pretty decent musicianship. Then something went wrong and the band stopped writing songs. They released an album of covers of other stuff, and then they released an album of a concert they did with the San Francisco symphony which was basically them covering themselves, and then they stopped for a while.
Secondly, this band has issues with bassists. They've had the same vocalist and drummer since the beginning, they swapped out one guitarist (who went on to form Megadeth, so I'm not complaining) and they're on their fourth bassist, who was brought in from Ozzy Osbourne's band after that symphony album.
So, to reiterate, things I used to love about Metallica:
- lyrics. They were good. Not poetry quality, but they weren't always singing about women and I appreciated that. There was always a little bit of the Epic Metal writing in their work.
- Sound. Like I said, clean. Easy on the ears. I could hear singing. I could pick out separate instruments.
- Overall maturity. For a while it really was about the music. Not about putting fake heads on spikes for concerts or putting out albums just so they could say they were the loudest and fastest out there or (ahem) shooting an album in San Quentin prison just so they could look tough.
This is a band that I listened to nonstop for almost ten years. In that time I never got to see them live, and now I don't even want to. This isn't just bad music, this is flat out betrayal.
Worst unnecessary use of video animation to cover up band member aging: Dream Theater: Forsaken
I was recently asked what it would take for me to consider a guy gorgeous. And it's a pretty simple answer. For a guy to be gorgeous he needs to be generally good looking and at least as intelligent as I am. Looks aren't usually enough for me, but looks and brains are a lethal combination that will prompt me to do phenomenally stupid things like play Magic for 7 hours at a stretch just to watch someone else play and maybe have a chance to oppose him myself.
If we're going on looks alone, the bar gets set higher. I am firmly in the "tall, dark, and handsome" camp. I don't make any racial requirements, but long hair is a must. These traits are exemplified in this Dream Theater video by lead singer James LaBrie. (Sorry, I couldn't find photos). Sadly, this video shot in '92 or '93. Fifteen years later, James LaBrie looks like this, which isn't the same thing at all.
Now, about that Forsaken video. It's entirely animated, and the animation team decided to strip a good 4o or 50 pounds off James and give him a more lean muscled build than I ever saw him possess. What makes it really dumb, however, is that through the whole video, the James LaBrie character never speaks or sings along with the song. He doesn't open his mouth at all, other than to express a Keanu Reeves-esque confusion at life. I submit that there was no reason to make the main character resemble any member of the band. None. If they were looking for a dark, sickly figure, they might has well have modeled it off Trent Reznor, pre steriods.
Worst example of a band taking themselves far too seriously, allowing us to laugh at their expense: Kamelot: The Haunting
Good lord I wonder what this video design session sounded like.
"Our sound isn't goth enough. Our street cred is in danger. What ever shall we do?!"
"Let's shoot it in a church."
"Ooooh. Church. What will we do in a church?"
"Just walk up and down the aisles. That should be good enough."
"Really? Are you sure?"
"Fine, we'll make it blurry."
"What are we wearing?"
"Vinyl bodysuits, duh. This is a goth video, remember? Oh and that female guest vocalist has red hair. Let's put her in red vinyl."
"Oooooh."
"By the way, how long is this song?"
"At least five minutes. You want the singer to just walk up and down a church for five minutes?"
"Hrmm... Let's put a swing in. And four costume changes for the sexay female singer."
"Uhhh..."
"Oh, and lots of face lip-sync closeups. YEAH! "
"That still doesn't get us anywhere near five minutes."
"Your girl is good looking, we'll just shoot her on a white background and she can vamp like an idiot for three of them. No one will ever notice."
"Ok, but the girl is a guest singer. How about some focus on *our* singer?"
"Fine, closeups of him too. But only if he shaves his beard like Paul Jr. from Orange County Choppers."
"But...but... won't he look like a scrawny motorcycle guy singing dumb lyrics in a vinyl body suit in a blurry church?"
Yes. Yes he will. Oh my god.
