Favorite Artists, Least Favorite Songs

No matter how great an artist is, nor how much I may love them, no one is perfect. No two people will ever have their taste align perfectly, so there is an inevitability that at least one song over the years is going to annoy, disappoint, or even anger me. That's normal, and it's natural, so let's not take this as anything more than it is. While I'm going to say these are my least favorite songs by my favorite bands and artists, they are outliers in catalogs that have meant the world to me, those rare missteps that remind me I am not one of those reflexive lovers who sees people through unrealistic eyes.

If anything, not liking a song here and there only makes the love for all the others that much stronger. Does that make sense?

So here are my least favorites:

Tonic - Irish

Of all the bands I can mention, Tonic comes closest to being perfect. In fact, "Irish" is the only song from their four albums I can honestly say I don't like. So why don't I like it? For one thing, it doesn't sound like a Tonic song. The repetitive nature of the song is annoying, but if it was a classic Tonic melody, I could live with it. Instead, it sounds like a weird folk music hybrid, and being that it is all about Emerson's heritage, and I am not Irish in the least, I can't even connect with the lyrics. The whole thing is as if it was designed to alienate me as much as possible. And it does. I don't think I've listened to the song in fifteen years, even though the album continues to climb toward the top of my all-time favorites list.

Dilana - World Party (Free Love)

This is another relatively easy choice for me to make. I'm not a fan of world music, or music built off rhythmic bases, so compared to everything else on the "InsideOut" album, this is the one that stands out as being the least engaging. Maybe it's because the song is also trying to be happier, hence the party in the title, and I'm simply not one for that kind of thing. It's hard to tell.

Meat Loaf - Do It!

I could have gone with the song where Meat bragged, "I can barely fit my dick in my pants", but that one line can't compare to the all-out misery that is "Do It!" Coming at the end of the criminally underrated "Couldn't Have Said It Better" (whose failure robbed us of a decade of potentially great Meat Loaf albums), I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to have Meat go through this wholly unmelodic cadence, along with a grinding riff, and no chorus whatsoever. It's short enough to be able to ignore, but just knowing it's there is enough to make me sigh every time I listen to the album.

Jimmy Eat World - Goodbye Sky Harbor

There are times when I listen to something deigned a classic, and for the life of me I can't understand why. This is one of those cases. I'm not all that keen on "Clarity" to begin with, but "Goodbye Sky Harbor" is considered one of Jimmy Eat World's greatest achievements. I don't get it. The first three minutes are a fine enough little song, but then it drones on, playing the same guitar riff for the next eight minutes. Uninterrupted. If ever there was a song that proved a twelve minute song needs to have twelve minutes worth of ideas, it's this one. It's so hard to listen to, I've stopped trying to listen to "Clarity" anymore, just because it feels hollow to listen to an album where you ignore a full quarter of it.

Elvis Costello - Pump It Up

I'm sure there are other songs I think are worse, but few annoy me quite as much as this one. There's something about the organ swell, and how repetitive it is that rubs me the wrong way. I don't think the rest of the song is anything great either, but it's that organ that does all the heavy lifting. It's a combination of a circus tone and a swirling rhythm that almost sounds like it's floating around the speakers that is off-putting to me. Rather than wanting to do what the title implores, I would always rather turn this one down and move on to the next song. The comparison to "Radio, Radio" only made it worse, as that song took the same blueprint, and did it far more successfully.

Halestorm - I Like It Heavy

Songs about rocking are always among my least favorites, because they fall into that category where if you have to brag about something, it means it isn't obvious. So for this song to be so consumed with telling us how much they like to turn it up and rock out undercuts the whole purpose. It's the principle in writing; show, don't tell. This song tells us they rock, rather than actually rocking. It's also a completely boring blues song that doesn't offer much in the way of a melody either. It's a definite skip every time for me.

Blues Traveler - Free Willis

Bad ideas are not always obvious until long after the fact, but this one should have been. To put a song on an album where Bruce Willis goes into a spoken word performance is the sort of thing I didn't think anyone could think was a good idea when sober. At some point in the process of making the album, someone must have been lucid enough to hear this for the truly awful and unmusical thing it is, and yet they went and put it on the album anyway. It's a good thing I don't like the record, otherwise it would piss me off every time I had to think about it.

Edguy - Save Us Now

Comedy songs are hard, because jokes wear out the more you hear them. And if the joke isn't funny to begin with, there's no hope at all. That's where this song falls, as it's an ode to Tobi thinking drummer Felix looked like an "alien drum bunny" behind his kit. Yeah, I don't think that's really a funny joke, and with the album being twenty years old now, it hasn't gotten any funnier. It's also a pretty lousy song, with plenty of shrieking vocals I detest, and not much in the way of a hook. Edguy has other songs people hate, but that I can usually find the appeal of. Not this one.