Five songs that bands will always regret
It’s hard to be around in the music industry for too long and not have a handful of regrets. Whether it’s treating a band member poorly back in the day or the odd show that disappointed their fans, every artist is bound to have a few skeletons in their closet that they aren’t proud of showing people later in life. Then again, regretting certain songs isn’t always the same, and artists like Fleetwood Mac have always had different reasons why their tunes never came out the way they wanted to.
Because not every regretful song needs to be terrible. There’s a lot that goes into making an excellent record, and whereas most artists could spend their time slaving away in the studio weaving together that magical take, it’s a lot more frustrating spending all that time and effort and having the final product not come together like it should.
It’s the nature of the beast for some of those songs to squeak through, but then some songs were objectively terrible from the word go. Whereas most people would have thrown this kind of tune out the minute that it came into their head, the fact that they made it onto the final product either means that one person was overruling everyone else in the room or that they were deliberately trying to make whatever they could to say that the record was finished.
There’s nothing wrong with having a few songs that don’t end up working out in the long run, but songs on here go the extra mile by not having a good idea to begin with. All the pieces were there for them to make something great, but when they eventually got themselves together, all they could do was look back and shake their head about how the hell they ended up with that kind of result.
Five songs bands will always regret
‘Love Song’ – AC/DC
Everyone knows that an AC/DC isn’t one to hold back. Throughout every part of their career, they spent their lives trying to make some of the most badass rock and roll songs ever made, always abiding by the rule of sex, drugs and rock and roll throughout every tune. But when they were first trying to figure out their sound, the Young brothers made one major mistake when they assumed that the audience really wanted them to talk about their feelings.
While ‘Love Song’ is far from the worst rock and roll track in the world, it doesn’t scan properly as an AC/DC song. This was never a band meant to be making introspective material, and looking back on the record nowadays, Angus Young felt that it should never have been made, only bringing down their first album, High Voltage. There were a lot more badass and far more erotic songs to come, but you can’t really blame them for striking out on their first step up to the plate, right?
‘Amsterdam’ – Van Halen
There are still legions of Van Halen fans who swear by David Lee Roth being the only frontman for the group. As much as Sammy Hagar has done for the group, there was a certain magic that Roth had with them that would never be seen again. That shouldn’t matter when ‘The Red Rocker’ had his own kind of magic when working on their material, but it was clear that the band had some tension in the studio when putting together ‘Amsterdam’.
Since the Van Halen brothers are natives of the Netherlands, the fact that they are on a song that was all about going to Amsterdam and getting stoned out of their minds was never going to sit well with them. They might not have been what Hagar meant by that, but considering the rest of the album was all about deeper topics on ‘Can’t Stop Lovin’ You’ and ‘Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do’, this was the moment where things started to go off the rails. Balance was already one of the most ironic album titles they could have thought of, but the tension would only get worse from here.
‘Have A Cigar’ – Pink Floyd
Roger Waters never wanted to write simple songs when working with Pink Floyd. Ever since Syd Barrett left the group, he made it his mission to think about the record as one continuous piece, with each song almost serving like a musical scene in the narrative half the time. The Wall is the clearest example of that kind of album structure working correctly, but in between some of their epics on Wish You Were Here, Waters had a few issues going back to ‘Have A Cigar’.
Outside of paying tribute to their founder, this was meant to be a condemnation of big busines in the record industry, but when this tune was given to Roy Harper to sing, it only served to take the piss out of the whole situation. The line ‘Which one’s Pink?’ is admittedly pretty funny, but since everyone was coming off of the horror show happening on ‘Welcome to the Machine’, this was the laid-back version of that, only this time with an outsider coming in. Although David Gilmour couldn’t have done this tune justice, it is definitely an anomaly compared to the rest of the album.
‘I Don’t Want To Know’ – Fleetwood Mac
Nothing about Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours could be considered easy to work on. The entire band were already going through separations from each other, and while they channelled a lot of that grief into the songs, there’s no way for someone to have fond memories of their former partners when singing about how much they hate them. But if Stevie Nicks already had a problem with tunes like ‘Go Your Own Way’, she was livid over the fact that ‘I Don’t Want To Know’ unintentionally killed one of her songs.
While the tune itself is a nice bit of Everly Brothers-esque harmonised rock and roll, the reason why it doesn’t fit had to do with one special song: ‘Silver Springs’. Nicks’s signature tune from the record that was supposed to hold the entire thing together ended up being too long for vinyl restrictions, which forced the band to work up this quick arrangement of a shorter song and demote ‘Silver Springs’ to a B-side. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but since everyone was focused on the album proper rather than the flipside of a single, Nicks was furious that the song didn’t get its just due until later when they were working on The Dance.
‘One In a Million’ – Guns N’ Roses
Guns N’ Roses weren’t considered ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Band’ by accident. The whole point behind their music was to be a bit edgier than what was commonly heard out of LA, and while Appetite for Destruction was catchy as hell, it didn’t exactly get every parent’s approval, either. But even for a band used to controversy, Slash drew the line the minute that he heard what Axl Rose had done on the back half of GNR Lies.
The EP was supposed to be a small acoustic album to tide fans over until their next full-length, but ‘One in a Million’ was Rose’s excuse to be as offensive as possible. Despite claiming to be playing a character, Rose was overcommitted to this kind of offensive tune, especially when he starts spouting out racist and homophobic slurs that wouldn’t feel out of place on the darker sides of Twitter today. Everyone can claim poetic license when making some of their greatest material, but even if this were one of GNR’s finest tunes, it still wouldn’t save everyone from the secondhand embarrassment if they are caught listening to this in public.
