I used to sing with an acoustic guitarist in the mid 80s and we did AP. All l can tell you is it is fun as shit to sing, and NOBODY l ever saw in a bar was able to sing along with the verses.Originally Posted by arturs
I used to sing with an acoustic guitarist in the mid 80s and we did AP. All l can tell you is it is fun as shit to sing, and NOBODY l ever saw in a bar was able to sing along with the verses.
I go, and come back, like memories and symptoms.
I go, and come back, forever, evermore.
Part of me remains abandoned in a circle.
Part of me moves on.
'Everything Is Beautiful' is another one of those treacly 70s ones, with a children's choir to boot. I think the only record I ever liked that on was Keith West's 'Excerpt From A Teenage Opera'. (I'm not sure how well known that is in the US.)
Actually a fair bit of late-period Michael Jackson definitely qualifies. He started taking himself very seriously indeed.
Last edited by JJ88; 3 Weeks Ago at 03:11 PM.
Indeed. "Man in the Mirror" is so goshdarned sincere you could plotz.
I think I have to mention "Ben" over in the "music that makes you happy" thread now.
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Amanda by Boston
Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit.
Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit
Country music is a mine field of cringe-inducing sincerity.
Conway Twitty's You Never This Far Before - it could be a 'cheatin song' but the lyrics suggest virginity at risk and considering Conway's age at the time... creepy.
Kenny Roger's Coward of The County - I wonder if anyone had ever gone to a Gatlin Brothers show and shouted out, "THIS ONE'S FOR BECKY!" ["... and there were three of them", Kenny sang ominously.]
Red Sovine was the grand master of overly sincere, overtly sentimental pap. Go check out songs like Teddy Bear or Little Rosa.
Very true, on all accounts. Folk music is like that too, lots of songs about people dying, as I recall. A few from both genres that come to mind:
El Paso (psychotic cowboy commits murder, steals a horse, comes back to town a couple weeks later because he's so in love with a Mexican barmaid, gets shot to death on sight)
Sing Me Back Home (singer doing time is asked by a condemned man to sing his favorite spiritual for him, before he goes to the gallows)
Ode To Billy Joe (have you ever actually seen the Tallahatchie Bridge? Likes five off the water!)
Tom Dooley (a song about a murderer as he goes to the gallows)
Me And My Uncle (The song's narrator and his uncle get into a shoot out over accusations of cheating during a card game, uncle eventually dies, at which point the narrator "grabbed the gold/And I left his dead ass there/By the side of the road")
Me And Bobby McGee
I mean, I could go on and on.
Heavy metal has a lot of "overly ernest" songs too. My beloved Iron Maiden is rife with them. So is Judas Priest. Thin Lizzy, too, come to think of it.
How about "Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and Pearl Jam (among others)? And in the same vein, "Leader of the Pack"...
Nobody's mentioned The Moody Blues. For example, in the middle of "Candle of Life", you get "So love everybody and make them your friend" twice...
Earlier in the thread, someone mentioned Bloodrock's DOA, a song about a man's experience as he dies following a plane crash. I remember I first heard of that song, because Bloodrock were included in a "Where are they now?" piece Rolling Stone did back in the early 90's. As I recall, one of the Bloodrock guys said that every year after Halloween, they got big fat royalty checks, because every classic rock station (and maybe stations besides) played DOA, because it was so "spooky" (especially the album, which starts with that sort of horror movie organ intro).
Gotta disagree on this one. I think "American Pie" ranks up as one of my favorite songs of all time. I have heard it a million times, but still love it.
…and insists that the girl who doesn’t do anything but dance is the one who is “wicked and evil.”
Hurtleturtled Out of Heaven - an electronic music composition, on CD and vinyl
https://michaelpdawson.bandcamp.com
http://www.waysidemusic.com/Music-Pr...MCD-spc-7.aspx
Thinking about it, I think the key dividing line in what makes these songs good/bad is sentimentality. For me anyway.
That song is like Death Wish,country style. That particular lyric is surely one of the grimmest in any hit record.
That was the 'death disc', of which there were several examples ('Tell Laura I Love Her' and the like). 'I Want My Baby Back' is often cited in threads such as this, but I always thought that was meant to be a parody anyway.
Last edited by JJ88; 3 Weeks Ago at 09:10 AM.
I bought one of their other LPs and was surprised to find that they covered an early Soft Machine song.
"A Certain Kind"--they even released it as a single.
Hurtleturtled Out of Heaven - an electronic music composition, on CD and vinyl
https://michaelpdawson.bandcamp.com
http://www.waysidemusic.com/Music-Pr...MCD-spc-7.aspx
I actually read a debate on this on another site. Someone suggested that the guy he shoots and kills in the second verse isn't in fact "a handsome young stranger", but in fact a local person known and loved by the townspeople. That's why they were able to scare up a posse to go after the song's narrator, so quickly. If it had been just someone who came into town, no one would have cared, but because he was a "local", that made it different.
BTW, he does refer to the shooting as a "foul, evil deed", so I suppose he does have a conscience, after all, but apparently coupled with a hair trigger temper.
I also remember someone pointing out that El Paso isn't anywhere near "West Texas".
The English folk tradition is chock-full of what we would call "murder ballads", usually with a long involved story. I can't name any specific examples off the top of my head, but Pentangle recorded many of them (a couple on Sweet Child), and also Fairport (I think).
I go, and come back, like memories and symptoms.
I go, and come back, forever, evermore.
Part of me remains abandoned in a circle.
Part of me moves on.
I do love murder ballads
But I have to add they aren't by any means exclusive to English folk; we find them in American folk, in C&W, in jazz, in pop, in rock'n'roll, and in rap/hiphop ... at the very least. Consider "Delilah" (Tom Jones), "Goodbye Earl" (Dixie Chicks), "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" (Vicki Lawrence), "Miss Otis Regrets" (Cole Porter), "Janie's Got a Gun" (Aerosmith), "Stagger Lee" and "Frankie and Johnnie" (both American trad), "Stan" (Eminem), "Folsom Prison Blues" (Johnny Cash) ... even "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Rocky Raccoon" (both by some band I can't remember). All great songs IM(NS)HO.
There's a playlist to be made here...
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"Dark Lady" by Cher: "The next thing I knew they were dead on the floor..."
In the 100 Worst Rock N Roll Records Of All Time, the Mike And The Mechanics atrocity Living Years is noted as featuring a children's choir, which is apparently one of the reasons it was listed, due to the blatant attempt to "manipulate the listener's emotions".
For me, I think about the only time I ever heard a children's choir sound good in the context of rock music was Another Brick In The Wall Part Two. Oh, and then there was this:
No children's choir -- not even the Vienna Boys' Choir -- can compete with Karen:
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^ Nice try. But you're not getting me to click on that!
Your loss.
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I hate that song with a passion. The original and the cover. I remember hearing an older friend bitd say that they played that song at a retail store that he went to, and the resulting earworm had him almost at wits end. It was as if he described a python falling out of a tree and wrapping itself around him, trying to crush the life out. I had to sympathize with him.
Another song of that ilk is "Live Is Life" by Opus. Another one I give a wide berth to.
Oh Ruuuuuubeeee. Don’t take yer luv to town.
In the ghetto (in the ghetto )
Then one night in desperation
The young man breaks away
He buys a gun, steals a car
Tries to run, but he don't get far
And his mama cries
In the ghettoooohhh
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