‘Press’ – Paul McCartney

It’s practically impossible to make any Paul McCartney single sound bad from back to front. From his days with The Beatles onwards, McCartney has kept up a track record of making songs that get stuck in people’s heads even by accident, despite some of them never leaving, like the relentless bashing of ‘Ebony and Ivory’. When he got to the tail end of the 1980s, though, the former Beatle got a little bit too carried away when teaming up with new producers to get a fresh sound.

Despite Press to Play being one of the least exciting McCartney albums in existence, ‘Press’ is the one song on the record that’s as close to perfection as this era gets. The melody is great, and McCartney sounds like he’s having a ball singing about sex again, but hearing him paired with synthesisers and a bunch of keyboards makes the whole feel like a processed version of what Macca was used to.

Then again, it’s probably better that we got this kind of tune as a single while we could. A song as great as ‘However Absurd’ would never have fit in with the typical radio format, but if all that we had left was the dad-tastic sounds of ‘Stranglehold’ or hearing him try to get nasty on ‘Angry,’ I guess ‘Press’ is the only thing that is agreeable with any casual McCartney fan.

‘Slow Country’ – Gorillaz

On Gorillaz’s debut album, it wasn’t clear whether Damon Albarn was in over his head or not yet. There were many moments on the record that worked, and the single ‘Clint Eastwood’ was all over the place, but there was a lot more ground to cover before he hit on something like Demon Days. Which is a shame because had ‘Slow Country’ been released a few years later, it would have overcome some of the worst mixing decisions that Albarn had ever made.

Most of the album feels like watching some zany cartoon show, so it would make sense to add some sound effects to a few of the songs to immerse everyone in the world. While ‘Man Research’ accomplishes that with flying colours, hearing one of the best melodies on the album is immediately shot in the foot when listening to the wind sound effects in the background, which are often coming in louder than Albarn’s in a few areas.

I suppose it does its job of putting the listener in the backseat of the buggy on the cover of the record while driving through a desert, but all that people can focus on is whether or not they can hear pieces of the song through what is sure to be a sandstorm happening on the other side of the speakers. Gorillaz did have a lot of good ideas to work with during this period, but perhaps Albarn had to face a few stumbling blocks like this before getting to work on ‘Feel Good Inc’ with its cackling laughs.

‘Jungle Man’ – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Red Hot Chili Peppers have always been joined at the hip with Rick Rubin. Even though he wasn’t there at the band’s inception, every one of their hits has always come from the bearded production guru guiding them through a song and telling them what parts speak to him and which should best be left on the cutting room floor. Without that kind of guidance and a mountain of cocaine, though, it wasn’t a big surprise seeing ‘Jungle Man’ get buried in the mix.

Even though the band was no more than a novelty act on their first records, the idea of getting George Clinton to produce their sophomore effort was far from a bad idea. Since this was the era where one of the godfathers of funk was on massive cocaine benders, most of the record feels like it’s mixed by someone with zero attention to detail, with Hillel Slovak’s guitar being pushed too far in the background and the backing vocals sounding like something you’d hear out of a high school pep rally.

It is a funk song, and by definition, that means Flea’s bass sounds pretty decent, but you can’t help but listen to the album and feel like you’re listening to the band at a distance. They still had some growing up to do, but the real tragedy is that Slovak never got to hear his guitar parts sound halfway decent on record during his lifetime.

‘One Little Victory’ – Rush

Considering how much baggage Rush had to plough through in the 2000s, coming back with a song called ‘One Little Victory’ would be an understatement. The band had to heal their wounds after Neil Peart went into self-imposed exile, and once he started working again, there was still that question as to whether he could live up to his standard. So when it worked, they wanted to announce their comeback as loud as possible. As a matter of fact, maybe a bit too loud.

While a lot of bands have fallen victim to the “loudness wars” of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Rush is one of the worst examples of a band mangling their own record. Since they had to make sure that everything sounded great, ‘One Little Victory’ is the worst offender on the record in terms of raw pain, being enough to give the listener a migraine if they happened to stumble upon the first mix of the tune out in the wild.

The prog giants did grant us mercy by bringing a remixed version to streaming services, but that didn’t stop the amount of ear fatigue people experienced upon release. Thankfully, though, anyone even mildly curious about the initial mix is going to have to inflict that torture upon themselves. It makes for a fascinating listen, but you have been warned in case you’re looking to dig deeper.

‘Headshrinker’ – Oasis

Oasis practically had an uphill battle before they even bothered getting their first record done. They had the power to become the biggest band in the world, but whenever they went into the studio, nothing did them justice until Owen Morris added his signature brick walling technique. While that helped give them a distinctive sound, there’s truth to the phrase “too much of a good thing,” and ‘Headshrinker’ marked the moment where things started to teeter off the edge a little bit.

Even though this is a B-side on one of the greatest singles the band ever put out, it’s more than a bit of a harsh listen. It’s easy to see the band’s vision of trying to emulate bands like Sex Pistols in their delivery, but the more that everyone gets sucked into the groove, the more Noel Gallagher’s guitar burrows into their ears, sounding like you’re up right next to the amplifier as he’s playing.

While their cover of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man’ is worse in terms of raw noise in the mix, this hurts more knowing that it’s a finished original tune. The band would probably be the last people worried about the finer details of every single instrument in the mix, but if they happened to dial the volume knobs back by only a hair, we could be looking at the most flawless single to come out of the 1990s.

Everything on ‘Time’ – Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac has always had a strange relationship with audio fidelity. Not many people can claim to make records that sound so ramshackle like their early years and yet still be the owners of one of the greatest-sounding records that the 1970s ever spit out in Rumours. While they picked up some bad habits with the glossiness of the 1980s, it wasn’t until they reached the 1990s that everything started falling apart.

Granted, anything without Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham was going to sound like a step-down, but listening to Time makes people question whether the production team walked out as well. Although John McVie and Mick Fleetwood are in fine form as a rhythm section, the whole CD sounds like some dollar-store version of 1990s country music that happens to have ‘Fleetwood Mac’ on the front, complete with the twangiest guitars that the band have ever made.

It’s easy to give it points for being avant-garde, but by the time Fleetwood decides to take the mic on one of the last songs on the album, it’s too late for anyone to care. The real Fleetwood Mac may have had the keenest eye for the gory details of a mix, but even if The Dance put them on firm ground again, this feels like a shallow husk of what the band used to be, as they try desperately to capture Nicks’s spirit again.

‘September’ – Earth Wind and Fire

All good party jams rely on having some killer production behind them. Even if someone like Prince made the insane decision to remove the bassline from ‘When Doves Cry,’ it doesn’t matter when the song still sounds great without it. But the bassline is what ties any great groove together, and despite having a beautiful bass part, the bottom end of ‘September’ is very questionable, considering how omnipresent it is in people’s lives.

Even though most people don’t need to bother listening to it outside of a wedding reception or a bar in the wee hours of the morning, the bass does come through a bit too hot in the mix. There are some moments where it’s pounding against your chest like it should be, but when listening to it in isolation, it’s easy to hear the song clipping in the mix, with the bass leaping out of the speaker and making strange static noises.

Given how many people are in Earth Wind and Fire, though, it’s easy to miss out on some of those subtle details. Then again, if there’s something wrong with one of the main instruments in the song, piling more instruments and voices on top of it isn’t exactly going to solve the problem. If anything, it makes the bass line stick out like a sore thumb whenever it jumps out of the mix.

‘Hurt’ – Johnny Cash

By the end of his life, Johnny Cash didn’t need to prove himself to anyone. He had some of the most celebrated country records to his name, and even if not every one of them had the same impact as the others, he was still as much of an outlaw in his 70s as he was in his 20s. And when combing through his back pages, ‘Hurt’ was the perfect way for him to say goodbye, if only with a few tiny blemishes along the way.

At the same time, I want to be nice to this kind of song. Cash’s time was running out, and a lot of this recording feels like them trying to get everything on tape before he couldn’t sing again. Despite his vocal take being perfect for a man in the twilight years of his life, one can’t help but start questioning what happened towards the end of the final verse when his voice starts turning to static in the mix.

While this sensation normally happens when someone is singing too close to the mic without a filter on it, the foul-up on the production is actually one of the few instances where a mistake helps the final mix of the song. Cash was looking death squarely in the face on this track, and hearing him slowly have less and less fidelity in his voice is the best example of him going through the sound barrier and over to the other side.

‘I’m Looking Through You’ – The Beatles

Everything that most of us take for granted in modern production today can be traced back to The Beatles. Outside of George Martin’s brilliant orchestration work and willingness to experiment in the studio, the Fab Four were the ones responsible for suggesting that they do things outside of the norm, like using backwards music or exploring the realm of feedback on record. That didn’t mean that they couldn’t be in a rush when it came to making some of their more adventurous material.

Because as much as Rubber Soul pushed the boundaries for them, they still needed to get everything out before the end of the year, which meant recording ‘I’m Looking Through You’ insanely fast. It’s already clear that something is off on the early versions of the tune where they screw up the acoustic opening, but there are messy parts littered throughout the song, like a stray guitar that plays the odd lead note here and there, or hearing Ringo Starr miss his snare drum during one of the verses.

This kind of screw-up would normally be fine-tuned by any other group, but since the band was in a hurry before getting back out on tour, it’s easy to see it as a few rough edges of the tune. And since this was meant to introduce the Fab Four to the world of folk rock, it was as good a time as any to have a few blemishes in the mix that caught people’s ears.

‘One’ – Metallica

No one would have blamed Metallica for wanting to take an extended break after they lost Cliff Burton. He had been the big brother of the group for half the time they were together, but they knew that he would have wanted them to carry on rather than spend any time moping around. If anyone knows the first thing about psychology, though, that meant never getting proper time to grieve, and that meant all of their internal feelings suddenly got directed at the new kid behind the four-string.

Even though it’s understandable to see the band take all their aggression out on Jason Newsted when he first joined, hearing them intentionally screw up their own album is beyond all semblance of good taste. Despite the band wanting to do justice to Burton, And Justice For All is a sad look at them putting their priorities in the wrong places, leaving no room for any bass in the mix and making the entire track sound thin as a result.

While any song from the album could take the top spot here, it’s hard to think of a song that was done dirtier than ‘One,’ which is up there with the best songs that the band have ever written, and yet is one of the few tracks that sounds infinitely better even if they play a lesser version of the tune live. It might have been a quiet tribute to Burton to have an album with no bass on it, but just because he was gone didn’t mean they had to release something with no bottom end.