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Most Repetitious Song Ever


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This one combines excessive repetition with stupid lyrics, a really stiff "white man's overbite" type of feel, and the over reaching, oh so soulful team of Grace and Marty. God... I really hate this tune. But I just love the way it keeps on going... and going... and going...

[video=youtube;nsdj9NRzqC4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsdj9NRzqC4

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Best,


Geoff

 

I was a pretty big Springsteen fan until the BTR album. As America 'discovered' the guy I'd been listening to since right after the release of his first album (Welcome to Asbury Park), I discovered that he had learned how to successfully dumb his once interesting if sometimes overly wordy/poetic songs down into a slick, repetitive format apparently well designed to stick in the head of drug and alcohol addled Middle America types. At first, I was exhilarated by the brazen pop sensibilities -- but after a few listens to key songs on the radio, I knew I wasn't going to be buying the album. Unfortunately, two different sets of friends gave me the record that Christmas or on my birthday. I gave one away and saved one for no particular reason. I haven't listened to it since then.)

 

That said, as utterly annoying as I find that song -- and I most certainly do -- there are songs I find even more annoying.

 

Say, "Baker Street." Damn, I hate everything about that thing. That horrible, half-borrowed, repeated-to-death sax figure, glued on like a Cadillac ornament on a VW, the seemingly interminable verses. Another song I liked when I first heard it -- at least for a verse or two -- but soon hated.

 

Or "Spinning Wheel." I hadn't heard BS&T on purpose since the 60s, even though I have that second, breakthrough album which I bought right after it came out and loved enough to listen to twice, once the next day, and then barely really put it on again as it was by then in heavy rotation and by three listens I was over it. That said, I put "Wheel" and their cover of "God Bless the Child" on a couple days ago and, I have to say, it's a very professional effort. Al Kooper may have left the band already (and their first album, which he was heavily involved with was not much like any of their subsequent efforts) but the craft and musicianship on the album is really stunning. But I don't want or need to hear it.

 

 

That said, having spent much of the 90s listening to electronica, when loop construction caught on at the end of the 90s, it 'elevated' repetition to new 'heights.' I've heard stuff on the once-trendy college station in Santa Monica that was -- literally -- a couple of loops from the old Mixman software repeating without change for minutes at a time. (The former evening DJ and now music director there was apparently a fan of club music but appeared to have an amazing tolerance for seemingly endless repetition and tennis-shoe-in-dryer rhythm mashes.)

 

Such lowest common denominator club music drives me nuts. But, I'm told, with the right drugs, you can't even hear it.

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Springsteen's first album was Greetings From Asbury park. IMHO, it was loose and sloppy. I much preferred the next two albums, and don't find the material at all repetitive or dumbed down. I'd pretty much lost interest in his new work by BITUSA, though.

 

If you don't like carefully arranged and tightly performed music, then BTR wouldn't be your cup of tea. I had a chance to see that tour at a great venue for $2 and passed it up, and I still regret it. All my friends who went said it was the best show they'd ever seen, and the crowd included some very serious show-goers with eclectic tastes.

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That said, as utterly annoying as I find that song -- and I most certainly do -- there are songs I find even more annoying.


Say, "Baker Street." Damn, I hate everything about that thing. That horrible, half-borrowed, repeated-to-death sax figure, glued on like a Cadillac ornament on a VW, the seemingly interminable verses. Another song I liked when I first heard it -- at least for a verse or two -- but soon hated.


Or "Spinning Wheel." .

 

 

 

Wow! And I think those two singles are both genius. The chord progressions on both of these songs is ingenious, I think! Trying playing these songs with their precise original chords.... But it IS true that the AM radio stations ground these records into the ground when they were new.

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Good call. You get extra points for getting a whole stack of annoying quatities into a single song. [spoiler text in white, below.]

 

But few take it so far as to plunge all the way through the annoying pop song dimension into the genius that true madness represents. One such song is "The Night Chicago Died."

 

 

 

It was Herman's Hermits doing "I'm Henry the VIIIth, I Am."

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Springsteen's first album was
Greetings From
Asbury park. IMHO, it was loose and sloppy. I much preferred the next two albums, and don't find the material at all repetitive or dumbed down. I'd pretty much lost interest in his new work by BITUSA, though.


If you don't like carefully arranged and tightly performed music, then BTR wouldn't be your cup of tea. I had a chance to see that tour at a great venue for $2 and passed it up, and I still regret it. All my friends who went said it was the best show they'd ever seen, and the crowd included some very serious show-goers with eclectic tastes.

Oops. Of course. As I winced, I saw the postcard-like cover in my mind's eye.

 

The BTR album is 1000% what it is, don't get me wrong. For me, that was the problem. It felt so intensely artificial and overhyped that it seemed to convey phoniness backward to his earlier efforts. And so, in the light of that album, the flaws I'd perceived but indulged in Welcome seemed to tip the balance, so that when I tried to recapture the positive feelings I'd felt toward that, most of what I saw were the artistic flaws and self-indulgences I'd seen but let slide.

 

 

FWIW, I've seen some shows by bands that I didn't care about that sort of won me over with their quality and craft. I remember seeing the Grassroots, who I'd always dismissed as radio fodder, opening up for Creedence Clearwater at Disneyland (no, really) and they laid down a really solid set of one strong, hooky pop song after another. (By contrast, Creedence was OK -- but they only played two songs, about 16 or 17 minutes. I thought it was because it was Disneyland, but I later saw them at a big arena show and they played less than 25 minutes. I couldn't believe it -- particularly since I'd spent the highest per concert prices ever to see them and the opening band -- which was, like, Dewey Martin's New Buffalo, which was not groovy. Show started at 8 pm and me and my date were walking out into the parking lot at 9:25 pm wondering what to do do with the rest of the evening now that we were out of money.)

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Wow! And I think those two singles are both genius. The
chord progressions
on both of these songs is ingenious, I think! Trying playing these songs
with their precise original chords....
But it IS true that the AM radio stations ground these records into the ground when they were new.

 

Well, even though there's some strong overlap, you and I have pretty different tastes overall.

 

And when I hear a song too much, I get a negative gut reaction, no matter how much, intellectually, I know I like it. I mean, "Stairway to Heaven" or "Hotel California"? Both songs with a number of charms that I really liked. The latter probably wins, overall, because the lyrics are pretty sharp, whereas the lyrics for "Stairway" are pretty much just some disjointed Hermetic images to hang a really cool sounding song on. It sounds like it means something, and that pretty much seems to work for it. Both songs I've really bonded with.

 

But... do I ever need to hear either of them again? (And I own them both on vinyl... somewhere.) Not really.

 

Now, those are songs I really like. ;)

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Another good call. I'm not gonna put this on to confirm it, but the way I remember it, I thought "Chocolate Rain" would have been really interesting and provocative had it been about 2'20".

 

 

BTW, while I'm overly tolerant of many of my song and production craft faults, one thing I'm a bear about on myself is track length. Once one of my songs gets past 3'30", I'm looking to cut something.

 

To be sure, song songs need to be longer. And, when the song is right, I can stand to hear a pretty long song by good musicians. (And, of course, jazz and classical often have very different time scales.)

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