The worst song in the world, according to Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos
Music is more than sound. Many people might misinterpret it as something that accompanies us on a drive to work or a beat that breaks the silence on a night out, but music inherently moves us more than most other art forms. Our brains have a limbic system, which we use when processing emotions and trying to control our memories. Music plays a part in both of these processes.
Essentially, when we hear music, our ears light up. When you hear something that makes you feel good, you get the initial dopamine hit of a song you like and it triggers memories in your brain that you can relate the song to. Music is not just an add-on in life; it is an intrinsic part of our memories and impacts how we live.
Of course, where there is good, there is also bad, so while there are tracks we like to listen to that trigger positive memories for us, others do the complete opposite. Some songs we despise, either because of how they sound or because of a memory they trigger. Songs can take us to different periods in time and places in the world, so if it’s somewhere we don’t want to go, we will obviously begin to resent the song.
That’s what happens every time Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand hears the track ‘Kumbaya’, as he finds himself taken straight back to his youth, having the mundane melody forced on him. “It’s a ubiquitous song that has been inflicted on so many people throughout their childhoods,” he said.
At first, Kapranos struggled to choose a song that he hated, given he doesn’t believe that word has much of a place in music. He has a point on a surface level. Generally, if we listen to a song and don’t like it, then we simply don’t listen to it again; we don’t sit and get angry over the fact that it exists.
“I thought, ‘Okay, let’s think of some music that makes you just feel bad at the thought of the song.’ So I was trying to think of what songs that fit that,” he went on to explain, “Most songs, if you don’t like them, you don’t hate them. You just feel ambivalent about them. There are even a couple of songs from bands you adore. The Beatles are famous for having the odd song or two – ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ – that, well certainly for me, don’t excite me, but I don’t hate them.”
Kapranos then looks past how a song sounds and focuses on what a song represents. In doing so, he arrives at ‘Kumbaya’. For him, it’s less a track that he dislikes and is instead a song that takes him back to dull nights in his childhood.
“I tried to dredge through my memories and experiences of life, and then, bang! Memories of ‘Kumbaya’ hit me in my stomach like a pool of fresh vomit,” he told AV Club, “I must have been a pre-teen because that’s when the song seems to have been inflicted on you more than any other time.”
This is the power of music; it is sound and a gateway to different periods in our lives. It is natural for us to associate sound with memory, and as such, Kapranos naturally connects ‘Kumbaya’ with his childhood. Most of us can remember times we sat around a campfire, singing that song, freezing cold and worried about the rubbish night sleep ahead. Well, if you listen to the song, you’ll be taken straight back there.
