10 revered classic rock songs that are actually awful
What is it that makes a song legendary? Well, based on some of the travesties that have become classics over the years, it is clearly not based on quality alone. It would seem that sometimes artists simply earn themselves a cache of goodwill among the critics and the masses, creating an aura of credit that allows them to pass atrocious songs off as worthy masterpieces like fool’s gold to the unscrupulous trader. Over the years, everyone from The Rolling Stones to Queen have been the benefactors of a strange reverence for songs that are, in the clear-eyed light of retrospect, god awful.
Quite often, the reason that these fake masterpieces aren’t called out is due to the fact that they become imbued with the notion that they are ‘iconic’. We mull over the matter and say, ‘Hey, this track might be hollow, but you can’t begrudge its place in history’. In truth, that may be the case, but that doesn’t mean they have changed history for the better, they’ve just ruined five-minute windows of billions of people’s days; Bluebottle Flies have done the same, but we don’t revere them for their ubiquity.
Now is not the time to be cynical, and there is plenty of amazing music to celebrate moving forward, but we don’t quite see this piece as cynicism going against the grain of beloved songs, but rather a public service announcement that 2023 is surely the year that we stopped giving air time to blighting bombshells that we’ve pretended are good for too long.
So, without further ado, let’s wade through the weird world of the charts and pluck out the chronic ‘classics’ that should, by rights, be cast into the ash heap of history. After all, we all thought sunbeds, smoking and the baggy suits of the 2000s were a good idea once upon a time, so why should shitshows from Radiohead be preserved indefinitely.
10 awful classic rock songs:
‘It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)’ – The Rolling Stones
Paul McCartney’s recent criticism of The Rolling Stones didn’t just stop at calling his rivals a blues cover band. He finished up his jibe by saying that The Beatles’ net was cast wider than theirs. If by that he also implied deeper, then it’s songs like ‘It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)’ that certainly help his argument. Granted, when it comes to rock ‘n’ roll, not every song has to have the bottomless depth of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ or some other timeless piece of folk poetry, but this track makes that point like a broken record with a tired riff and the campest gyrating this side of Cats The Musical.
By contrast, ‘Start Me Up’ is a song that exhibits the plus side to shallow rock ‘n’ roll — it’s an infectious piece of fun that taps toes as involuntarily as the knee-jerk reflex. It’s about as deep as a Saharan puddle, but it biologically taps into the human genome somewhere and releases a dose of serotonin. ‘It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It)’ is exactly the same, except it triggers the migraine gene into action with prolonged effect from the merest of exposure, all while reducing the band down to a parody of themselves: This Is Spinal Crap.
‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’ – Bob Dylan
The main downfall of ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’ is simply that it is a blot on the otherwise perfect copybook of Blood on the Tracks — and it all could’ve been avoided if the good Lord had intervened for once in his goddamn supposed infinite existence and taken that screeching, tuneless mouth-organ out of Dylan’s cakehole.
Aside from the harmonica, the track actually has a bopping rhythm that could set Sir Douglas Bader’s toes-a-tapping, but amid a beauteous album, that deathly squawk of sonic obscenity is a senseless attack on the senses. “It’s hard to relate to that,” Dylan once said of the album’s celebratory reaction by the masses, “I mean, people enjoying that kind of pain”. Well, Bob, it’s more enjoyable than you’ll ever know, but for a brief moment, my ears are in more pain than you seem to comprehend too. It’s certainly one of the better tracks on this list – it would be it’s Bob Dylan – but if AI could silence that beseeching harmonic, then it can happily take all our jobs.
‘Money’ – Pink Floyd
‘Money’ is a song that reinvents the reggae riff in the same way that Tippexing out the words as you read them reinvents the bookmark. Turgid and tiresome, this sparse background ostensibly provides the benefit of allowing the lyrics to rise to the fore. It’s just a shame that these lyrics are as about as insightful as King Henry VIII’s Guide to a Happy Marriage. It contains rambling banalities, such as: “I was in the right / Yes, absolutely in the right / I certainly was in the right / Yeah, I was definitely in the right / That geezer was cruisin’ for a bruisin’ / Yeah!”
Furthermore, it also insists on continuing a production policy that makes Dark Side of the Moon almost unlistenable in the modern age: overdrawn intros. I’m sorry, lads, but money really is too tight to mention at the minute, and I haven’t got time to be sitting through a 35-second chorus of trilling tills before the song gets moving. At least this bore inspired punk to come along and yell, ‘Get a fucking move on’.
‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ – Jimi Hendrix
It is already an oddity that at the height of the counterculture movement, a revolutionary star would choose to play the national anthem, but even if you leave politics aside, you’re left with an ear-splitting rendition of sustained dull drudgery. Does anyone actually listen to this? It must be the most talked about / least listened to iconic musical moment in history.
It’s hard to say definitively that Hendrix was the greatest guitarist in history, but he was unquestionably in the top one. And from this rarified position, he proved one thing finally: we all do have our flaws. For all the brilliance that Hendrix delivered on his six-string, he could occasionally waffle and somehow cramming extra notes into a distorted National Anthem is emblematic of that. Just because something is technically impressive doesn’t make it worthwhile.
‘Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing’ – Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder is a treasure who brightens our dismal days, a true musical genius, but the way he sings, “When you check it ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou-out” in ‘Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing’ reminds me perfectly of those moments in your teens when you’d grow so lethargic after a day ‘kicking about’ that an irritable annoyance would infect you. The only way to penetrate this Beavis & Butthead-like malaise was to project your inner lethargy through a series of sibling infuriating ‘nananana’ rambles and giggling. That’s the disposition that this song seems to have been sung from; it is just that Wonder is such a great vocalist he almost gets away with it.
That’s the sound of this song – the samba rhythm might mask it – but ‘Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing’ is the sonic encapsulation of a sugar slump. And it proves contagious. This track might slide by you if it’s played out at a poolside bar in Majorca, but if you hear old Wonder wailing, “Don’t you worry about a thing-ing-ing-ing-ing-ing-ing-ing-ing x 4” with a hangover on a rainy day it mutates brain cells towards a chronic dreariness and gives you plenty to worry about indeed.
‘Imagine’ – John Lennon
For this classic, John Lennon said that he “sugar-coated” communism. But it would seem that he made it all a little too sweet, so much so that it actually encourages cynicism even among the seven-year-olds that it actually set out to inspire. There is no denying the instantly recognisable poignancy that Lennon achieves on his £1,000 Steinway – it is an arrangement that would endear any mantra towards an iconic status – but it is failed by the cliched words that follow.
Speaking about Lennon’s knack for pairing profundity with perfect pop melodies, David Bowie commented: ”He would rifle the avant-garde and look for ideas that were so on the outside on the periphery of what was the mainstream and then make them apply in a functional manner to something that was considered populist and make it work.”
Here, he had an outside idea, but he treated the populous as idiots and, as a result, achieved very little with his anthem of peace other than creating a commercial cash cow crippled with arthritic irony. Sugar-coating is one thing, but creating something that is so insipidly idealist that even school kids can see through the lack of sincerity and humanised realism is an Achilles heel on an otherwise angelically performed classic.
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – Queen
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ is a song that has always seemed to me to be the equivalent of a conveyor belt sushi restaurant where you can’t actually remove any of the plates to savour them; you just have to jab at the food with your chopsticks and hope you get an enjoyable morsel as the tasty food whizzes by in a maddening blur.
Obviously, it is a rock opera, so this whirlwind is the intention, but rock operas are shit. It is this sort of pomp, pageantry and half-baked ideas that resulted in the facile ways of hair rock, and Queen need to be held accountable for their contribution with this so-called iconic anthem. There are great snippets in this song, like the invigorating solo or Freddie Mercury’s dramatic intro, but ice cream and gravy are great too, and I wouldn’t serve them together either. Moreover, the mishmash fails to tie the narrative together, which leaves you craving meaning in an unsatisfactory way. But above all, it has been mercilessly overplayed, and you can’t help but think that the band have leant into that a little.
‘High and Dry’ – Radiohead
It’s Travis for people who ask to try the pale ale before risking a pint. It’s Coldplay if Chris Martin was replaced by a mangy cat for the chorus. It’s a maudlin march of apathetically strummed chords that culminate in a piercing chorus that proves as comforting as the sound of a dentist’s drill. A bland and irritating exercise in nought.
You could forgive it for being merely depressing without merit, but to also be shrill is a crime against decency. The whole thing sounds like Tiny Tim coming off his uppers. As Liam Gallagher said of the self-pitying side of the 1990s: “They’re all in ‘pain’, well my fucking ears are in pain fucking hearing your fucking voice you twat.” The foul-mouthed Manc has a point with this one. Begging the question: Why was this so popular?
‘Girls & Boys’ – Blur
‘Girls & Boys’ is the sonic equivalent of a toddler having a tantrum in the midst of your hangover. A recent documentary recounted the experience of a traveller in the Amazon wherein a Botfly burrowed under his flesh and laid its eggs. Soon the traveller was beset by a maddening itch as he lay in his hammock and could physically hear the maggots crawling around under his skin. This would no doubt have been the second most irritating moment of his life, the first being when he had to endure Damon Albarn’s affected cockney chant on this atrocity.
Like Novocaine’s sworn enemy, this so-called Britpop classic amplifies pain, induces headaches, and conjures nausea. It may well capture the ‘boozy Brits abroad’ zeitgeist, but that is no excuse for the onslaught of unpleasantry.
‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ – The Beatles
This is The Beatles’ best-selling single, and that is no small tragedy. Their signature sound had already been established with the far superior ‘Love Me Do’, and ‘Please Please Me’ had previously shown off their progression, so the dreary ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ can’t really claim to have been a vital part of the band’s poppy beginnings. It’s a mere hit by virtue of the storm they had already brewed, and as a single, it has always seemed as hallow as a landlord’s handshake.
In the past, famed charts have ranked this as the second greatest Beatles song, which proves utterly bewildering to many of us who view it with clear eyes as a tepid teeny bopper cash-in that has nothing to say that any given 14-year-old with five chords and an aversion to sincerity couldn’t. And the churlishness seems to have bitten the band further down the line, as Lennon desperately wanted to ditch this sort of facile frolic in their back catalogue and move onto his solo stuff, so it ain’t quite harmless either, and I haven’t even mentioned the shoddy mix that pitches the vocals a little too loud. Ultimately, the best way to look at the quality of this track is to presume it was written by some long-forgotten band, would we be retrospectively hailing it as a masterpiece?
