The ghastly lo-fi last track on Neil Young's Broken Arrow, not that I think it's a great album. The Beach Boys - Love You. Love Is A Woman. The Beach Boys - Passing Friend. I Do Love You. Cat Stevens - Back To Earth. Bad Brakes. New York Times.
I can't believe how many great songs are mentioned in this thread! And I can't believe that (if I am not wrong) nobody has mentioned Mother on Synchronicity.
Genesis - Duke. Man Of Our Times. If there's a song I dislike on a Genesis album, I find it's usually written by Mike Rutherford.
It's grim as can be and the definitive answer to this thread. A side up there with Pet Sounds for their most beautiful music ends with "Dennis and I had to sit there holding it up Yeah but it had its you know they cooked the whole lamb and put its raw head back on Yeah that's right They didn't take the they didn't even burn the hair off it It's sitting looking at you like"
Yeah, I am with ya on Travels in Nihilon. Black Sea is one of my top tier XTC records, and that is one of the standouts tracks from it for me. I am not much of a fan of the first three XTC records, but Drums and Wires has a handful of songs I dig, with Complicated Game being one of them.
For me it's Sloop John B - don't like the original, and don't like what the Beach Boys did to it. It's a bit like the Beatles novelty songs, but it works even less with the Beach Boys.
Be tons of hate for this one im sure....I LOVE Freedom by Neil Young but On Broadway is absolutely terrible!!!
I like European Son a lot. The Murder Mystery is maybe their worst song ever and it ruins the third album
If there's one song that I'd say sticks out on Love You, it's got to be Good Time. If they weren't mining the SMiLE sessions to pad out albums, it was the Sunflower/Surf's Up era, only here it's even worse than later examples such as When Girls Get Together appearing on Keepin' The Summer Alive because Love You has such a distinctive production approach, not to mention the record as a whole dates from right in the middle of Brian Wilson (allegedly) having a long-term case of laryngitis. Now I think about it, The Beach Boys deserve to win this thread by a landslide: I'm Bugged At My Ol' Man, Bull Session With The Big Daddy, Our Favorite Recording Sessions... I beg of you, please make it stop! Perhaps worst of all, and I say this as a fan of the style, having that ten-minute disco remake of Here Comes The Night take up so much room on the Light Album when this might have worked better on a dedicated 12" single and there were more than enough outtakes floating around still rubs me the wrong way. Another band that comes dangerously close in places despite how much I love them has to be ELO. Had it not been for the breakout success of Roll Over Beethoven, I can't imagine follow-up album On The Third Day ending with the similar "classical-meets-rock" take on In The Hall Of The Mountain King, and Face The Music struggles to recover after leaving a sour taste in my mouth with Down Home Town. I remain unsure whether that was Jeff Lynne writing a sympathetic anthem from the perspective of an isolated redneck community or the result of him touring America and deciding to engage in a little punching down, but it doesn't work either way. Also, just because Don't Bring Me Down closed Discovery with one of his biggest hits to date, being something of an anomaly in that it didn't feature any strings, that didn't necessarily mean he had to repeat this formula on the next three mainline studio albums. I could argue that Rock 'N' Roll Is King at least contained a violin solo, only it's so heavily processed to resemble a drill - a leftover from the original Motor Factory lyrical concept, along with the otherwise out-of-place hammering and revving car samples - that this brings little comfort. I think it's more upsetting when you consider that a track on the level of Hello My Old Friend was cut to make room for that. Even on Jeff's more recent output such as Alone In The Universe or From Out Of Nowhere, he's arguably at his worst when trying to sound like someone else or revisiting past glories. I mean, who'd run to put Love And Rain on when the infinitely superior Showdown has been an established staple for decades?
