Five awful songs that inspired great ones
Inspiration isn’t exclusive to the finer things in life. Most artists already have to deal with heartache whenever they create one of their songs, so it’s not like everything that inspires them is necessarily sunshine and roses all the time. But even when a band puts out an absolute turd on vinyl, one artist’s failure could serve as the catalyst for someone else’s greatest achievement when bands like Green Day got ahold of them.
Because no matter how many times someone has tried to make a hit song, people can fall into cheesy territory fast. Compared to the massive amount of artists that try to follow trends, it’s easy to look at a song like it’s the best thing that you’ve ever done and then completely shit the bed when it comes time to put it down on record.
While fans may have been disappointed, some fellow musicians use these tunes as rocket fuel. Whether that’s writing something emotionally biting in response or going in the exact opposite direction, there was a fire in every musician’s belly when they heard these tunes, and they needed to show their contemporaries how it was done.
And even if not every track would go on to become a classic, they were at least an improvement on what had come before. The originals may have had about as much staying power as milk, but if they served as the launching point for a classic, you can at least say that they did one thing right.
Five awful songs that inspired great ones
5. ‘Love Will Keep Up Together’ – Captain and Tenille
Inspired: ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by Joy Division
For a decade that was nothing but star-studded, many people forget how impossibly lame the 1970s were. Yes, there were breakout stars like David Bowie and Elton John, but we also had to sit through Captain and Tenille, which is the musical equivalent of everyone’s fun aunt who got a karaoke machine and a few too many drinks in her system. While ‘Love Will Keep Us Together’ at least had a decent message behind it, it got flipped on its head the minute Ian Curtis got his hands on it.
While ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ got its title as a response to the cheesy duo’s song, this was the moment when the music world seemed to be changing in real time. Although the pop version of the 1970s felt like a wonderland where nothing could go wrong, this was the aftermath of punk when people were realising how dire things could get.
4. ‘Family Matters’ – Drake
Inspired: ‘Not Like Us’ by Kendrick Lamar
The art of the response song has always been a grand tradition in hip-hop. If there is anyone who disses their opponent, bowing out with one’s tail between their legs is borderline impossible to recover from. While Drake couldn’t afford to go down again after Pusha T serving his ass on a silver platter with ‘The Story of Adidon’, he didn’t know what he was getting himself into when making ‘Family Matters’.
While Drake had the world’s ear in his infamous beef with Kendrick Lamar, hearing him complain about everyone else during ‘Family Matters’ makes the whole thing sound incredibly disjointed. And even though the world wasn’t ready for Lamar to unleash hell minutes after on ‘Meet the Grahams’, ‘Not Like Us’ is the true victory lap that Lamar used to decimate ‘Family Matters’, especially in the final line where he namechecks the song and ‘God’s Plan’. Drake seems to be the kind of viral infection that the charts will never part with, but in terms of being serious as an artist, he has a long road before being seen as a viable player in the near future.
3. ‘Ten Little Indians’ – The Yardbirds
Inspired: ‘You Shook Me’ by Led Zeppelin
The road to Led Zeppelin was bound to be a little bit bumpy for Jimmy Page. Although he could play blues until the sun burned out of the sky, The Yardbirds’ journey into becoming a bit more pop-oriented was his signal to duck out and pursue his own dreams with Robert Plant and co. There were still some great aspects of his old outfit, but on Zeppelin’s debut release, Page did dip his toes back into some old habits when working on ‘You Shook Me’.
Although he loathed the song ‘Ten Little Indians’ for The Yardbirds, he felt that the initial echo effect of the tune was good enough to incorporate into their version of the blues standard. Whereas The Yardbirds’s attempt was a bastardised version of what the blues was supposed to be, Zeppelin was on the verge of rock and roll history by making both blues rock and hard rock perfectly in one go.
2. ‘That’s How I Like It’ – Lynyrd Skynyrd
Inspired: ‘American Idiot’ by Green Day
Most of the post-Ronnie Van Zandt Lynyrd Skynyrd isn’t anything to write home about. Despite still having many of the core members still in the group for the first half of their career, a lot of what they talked about seemed to be pandering to the Southern rock crowd that often felt as if a Bo Burnham song was being taken deadly seriously. So when Billie Joe Armstrong heard the Confederate flag-waving anthem ‘That’s How I Like It’, there was no way he was going to let that slide in the era of George W Bush.
The America the punk frontman saw was falling apart, and after hearing someone say that they were proud to be a redneck, Armstrong wrote ‘American Idiot’ to show how low that kind of citizen had fallen. Although Green Day was dipping their toes into extremely hot water by speaking out against the President, this was the most punk rock statement they could have made, and when the album followed a few months later, fans got a look at a punk rock band turning into rock and roll gods.
1. ‘MacArthur Park’ – Richard Harris
Inspired: ‘Hey Jude’ by The Beatles
The 1960s were never afraid to get a little bit cheesy. It only takes one look at Paul McCartney’s more whimsical songs from The Beatles’ catalogue to see how far the quality ranged within the span of one album. While most people begrudgingly listened through ‘Ob La Di Ob La Da’, ‘MacArthur Park’ was the kind of tune that was boring enough for Macca to do it one better when he created ‘Hey Jude’.
While the Richard Harris tune is a bit of a dirge, McCartney was shocked that the song was drawn out for as long as it was and still saw chart success. Not one to be outdone, ‘Hey Jude’ was an experiment to make their song longer, featuring a long extended outro with one of the greatest singalongs ever. It may go on a bit too long for some, but if all ‘MacArthur Park’ did was elicit boredom out of people, ‘Hey Jude’ is the kind of endless anthem that everyone hopes never stops.
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