Post a controversial music opinion

"nothing's gonna stop us now" is sick as hell; "we built this city" is not a good song but i have a weird affection for its tastelessness at this point in my life

I only just now disovered that cursed earworm lyric "knee deep in the hoopla" is also the name of that album

https://external-preview.redd.it/3fwvVSKl9gJodAjBRrL6YPzfRmg8ZgP37GZcEUdRPrE.jpg?auto=webp&s=faaf74f1b6b7fdf81c8ef90ee8844e132e547337

I like "We Built This City" a lot (though ftr, that's Starship)

it was boss when the Bucs drafted Vinny Testaverde in '87 & the local radio played "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now". love that boomer optimism.

From the Wiki:

In June 1984, Paul Kantner, the last remaining founding member of Jefferson Airplane, left Jefferson Starship. In October 1984, Kantner took legal action over the Jefferson Starship name against his former bandmates.

The band briefly performed as "Starship Jefferson" while legal proceedings occurred, before settling on the shortened name "Starship".

Starship Jefferson!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTHpfZhfQbk

Nick Cave is turning into Norman Tebbit, looks-wise at least

I assume many of you have read this— ftr, I love this song, and have ahem borrowed a phrase or two for poems throughout my life.

https://www.gq.com/story/oral-history-we-built-this-city-worst-song-of-all-time

I only just now disovered that cursed earworm lyric "knee deep in the hoopla" is also the name of that album

Haha. Lot of competition in that song, "Marconi plays the mamba" being probably the most bizarre earworm lyric.

haha from that GQ oral history

I probably should've tried harder to oppose it. I had a family.

That was the best song on the album, even though it's considered the worst song of all time. The rest were a load of crap.

I'm grateful that it helps renew my health insurance, via SAG-AFTRA.

Among the people who now say they hate it are two band members and the guy who wrote the lyrics.

I know ‘forget it jake, it’s rob tannenbaum’ - but calling this the Worst Song of All Time is such absurd hyperbole, even as a framing conceit for a GQ article.

but calling this the Worst Song of All Time is such absurd hyperbole,

Exhibit A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWHUsOcbv-0

"Sara" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" or goddamn "Miracles" are worse, but I wouldn't call them terrible except "Miracles" and not much more terrible than its contemporaries.

plus JA's own "Planes"

"Sara" is a fucking fantastic song and I will fight you over this

you're fire and ice, the dream won't come true

Storms are brewing in my eyes and my fists

when i worked at a used record store, we would often play purposely bad things to annoy our coworkers. one day, somebody played the longest jimmy buffett album he could find, so i was like, "okay, fine." and i played knee deep in the hoopla. outside of the singles, i'd never heard the rest of the album and i thought it was genuinely "so bad it's good" to the point that i bought the cassette and listened to it in my car for several years afterwards. it's cheesier than the worst cheese you can imagine, but that's why i liked it. haven't heard it in over a decade, but it's an album i can i very much enjoyed the last time i listened to it.

maybe i should revisit.

tbf Tannenbaum isn't relly calling it the worsts song of all time—it's framed up around Blender's determination and subsequent reputation as such

worst

Did he write the Blender article too? (Lol)

Austin listen to 30 seconds over winterland instead

the best darlene love christmas song is "all alone on christmas" from the home alone 2 soundtrack

Lol it is a good one

I saw her in Hairspray on Broadway in 2006. Voice hadn't diminished even a little

great video too, on account of it has macaulay culkin dancing on clarence clemons' shoulders during the sax solo

Why don't other holidays get festive tunes?

"Last Flag Day"

"I'm an April Fool for You (or am I)?"

Alfred's opinion that "Miracles" is terrible is the most controversial take I've seen in the whole Airplane/Starship conversation

xp jingle bells started out as a thanksgiving song iirc so they all just become christmas songs anyway

i originally thought alfred was talking about fleetwood mac's "sara" because i didn't realize everyone was still talking about JS, which would've been the ultimate post itt

“miracles” means so much to me, in all its rambling glory, if only you’d believe like I believe baby

Grace Slick apparently hated the song, her vocal interjections are intended to make fun of it (and Marty Balin?).

when i worked at a used record store, we would often play purposely bad things to annoy our coworkers. one day, somebody played the longest jimmy buffett album he could find, so i was like, "okay, fine." and i played knee deep in the hoopla.

Years ago a friend and i were in some LES hipster bar with a jukebox and we were wasted and had the idea to clear the place by treating the other patrons to as many plays of "we didn't start the fire" as $10 would buy.

We thought it was really hilarious at the time and waited around for over an hour to see it play out, struggling to contain our laughter the entire time. But it never came on so we approached the manager who refunded our $10.

I used to play the short clip of Chili taking a shit and talking to Puff Daddy on the TLC album. nobody ever reacted.

once I played Cannibal Corpse in a bar and they skipped the song 2 seconds in and the bartender showed up with a dollar bill and said "here is your dollar, we're not playing that"

TLC > REM

As best i remember the manager didn't actually object to our selection(s), the jukebox was just busted. We figured he was gonna say 'you guys are assholes, fuck off' but he just apologized and refunded our $10.

there was a rumor that a friend of mine got banned from a local bar for picking 15 different versions of Bohemian Rhapsody to play in a row on the Touchtunes jukebox, but it seems apocryphal because

a) I doubt Touchtunes has that any versions AND
b) the bartenders have a remote thingy where they can skip the songs, so why would they ban a dude instead of just hilariously making him waste his money by skipping them all

my two jukebox dickhead moves
- queuing up the entirety of 1999 the album
- queuing up Chicago’s “I’m a man” 5 times in a row

We put Rush’s 2112 on two or three times after being asked to leave some crowded bar (id issues).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTi6efpPSZ0

a few rounds of “yakety sax” is as good a dance floor clearer as they come

My collegiate hangout had "Maria" from West Side Story on it. The outro goes "I'll never stop saying Maria" so it was funny to play the song several times in a row before leaving

my brother was at one of the few strip clubs that uses Touchtunes rather than a DJ that the dancers pay and he put on a Frank Sinatra song, which the girls awkwardly tried to dance to, until the PA announcer angrily announced to customers that it "would not count as their dance", despite letting the song play through.

I do sometimes wonder about what goes into bands' aesthetic shifts like e.g. Yes becoming an 80s pop group. The GQ piece gives a pretty good picture.

Regarding Yes, though, what became 90125 didn’t start out as Yes. The band, built around Trevor Rabin, had a couple of Yes members, and was called Cinema. But at some point Jon Anderson was brought in, and then Tony Kaye, and it was decided, “Welp, might as well call it Yes.” It wasn’t nearly as calculated a hitmaking move as Starship/“We Built This City”; it was, arguably, largely accidental.

Right, that makes sense. Tbc, I didn't mean every situation was the same, just that it was interesting to get a picture in one case: the original true believer who grudgingly and resentfully went along, the producer who thought he was "no longer relevant", the new guy who had no attachment to the old band at all and was along for the hits, the veteran who just wanted to sell out and retire, the true believers in the new direction.

I got the feeling Tony Kaye was involved purely for legal reasons, as in they needed to have three original members to be allowed to call it Yes or something along those lines. I don't think he even played on 90125. Pretty sure he wasn't exactly a prog believer anyway though, and was happy enough to get the touring paycheck.

Yeah, I think that’s correct, and I seem to remember that Eddie Jobson posted on some message board a number of years ago about how he was drafted into the keyboardist role after the album was finished — to the extent that he was in the first cut of the “Owner Of A Lonely Heart” video — but once Kaye showed up, Jobson was out (and the video was re-edited).

My enduring memory of the Yes show I saw in 1984 — which, to this day, still stands as the worst musical performance I’ve ever witnessed in person — is of Kaye, approximately 40 minutes into a 90 minute keyboard solo, playing Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue In D Minor,” to absolutely tumultuous applause from the crowd. Being too young to drive at the time, my dad accompanied my brother and me to the concert; as he said after the show, “You know...they just didn’t swing.” Nailed it.

there's that bonkers 90215 Live: The Solos album if you want to relive it

Trying to imagine how much Jobson might have improved that lineup