Shitty Basslines

Name and shame the worst offenders ITT.

american pie by madonna?

Oh gosh. I also hate shitty basslines. Or, I hate bands with bassists where you can't hear the bassline properly. I like to be able to 'ride' the bassline through the whole tune. Noel Gallagher set the world back immensely by saying "a bassline never made a song good". Idiot.

Of course I'm drawing a blank right now, because I tend not to spend much time listening to tracks with shitty bass. But it is the quickest way to make me not like music, though I probably wouldn't immediately be able to articulate why I didn't like it.

not 'shitty' per se, but Husker Du's "Standing by the Sea" loses points with me for occasionally getting lodged in my head, remaining there for days at a time

if you just mean "inaudible basslines" then I'd like to introduce a vast swath of amateurishly-recorded metals into this thread

Return of the Pixies [Started by My name is Kenny (My name is Kenny) in September 2003, last updated Tuesday, January 28, 2014 1:58 PM by Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative) on I Love Music] 1 new answer
Shitty Basslines [Started by these birches is awful (Branwell Bell) in January 2014, last updated Tuesday, January 28, 2014 1:58 PM by my collages, let me show you them (bernard snowy) on I Love Music] 4 new answers

^^^^This just made me laugh so much, because of Kim Deal's YouTube rant about "REAL BASS PLAYERS".

But Kim Deal is one of those bass players who breaks every single rule about what makes a shitty bassline, and somehow makes all of her bassline awesome.

tell me these 'rules' and perhaps it will jog yr memory of the worst offenders?

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

if you just mean "inaudible basslines" then I'd like to introduce a vast swath of amateurishly-recorded metals into this thread ― my collages, let me show you them (bernard snowy)

I like the new Warpaint album so much 90% because of the interplay between bass and rums. It's delicious.

I was a bit nonplussed by the eponymous La Dusseldorf album when i picked it up recently because I didn't notice much in the way of basslines.

okay wow that poison song is all-but unlistenable

Well, my "rules" on bassline playing is along the lines of "fuck root notes; never play 4/4 with the kick drum, it's too plodding; syncopate; harmonise; melodic counterpoint" and pretty much all of Kim Deal's basslines are 4/4 root note playing, but they're still awesome anyway because they serve as such an anchor.

tbh I don't think bass can be played shittily. Dumb luck bassists always seem to fall into great, intuitive bass lines. As bass players get more technically proficient, their intuitive genius is replaced by slappy hilariousness. It always adds up to 10. A shitty bass line is a non-existent bass line. I can think of four worse things about that Poison song than the bass

The most-maligned bassist ime is Jaco on Joni and people are stupid his bass is great

yeah, i don't think i notice if a bassline is shitty or boring, but i def notice when one is great.

I get very irritated by "the U2 bassline" that so many bands trot out (I don't know what it is compositionally as I don't play anything, but I suspect it's probably very close to "4/4 root note playing" - it just goes 'dumdumdumdum-dumdumdumdum") because it seems so plodding and unimaginitive, but in the right context it's absolutely driving and effective and powerfully emotive.

the hardest thing about bass playing is trying not to let the low strings ring when you hit the high strings.

I'm more inclined to remember great / imaginitive / enjoyable basslines, but I sure notice the crappy / boring / unimaginitive ones at the time.

I can think of a hundred great electric bass lines but not a single bad one tbh

Yeah, the U2 bassline of anthemic rock is ground zero of shitty basslines BUT

You know who owns this thread? Flea owns this thread. Basslines so bad they made *me* hate Thom Yorke. Now that's shitty.

Have gone back & forth over the Chris Squire school of bass but that's such a cliche I don't even any more.

the Chris Squire school of bass? name names ffs, it's your thread man!

apparently Lennon's bassline on The Long And Winding Road is especially shitty but i haven't heard it in a long time

TLAWR is especially shitty as a song so best avoided bassline and all.

something about the bassline bugs me in this - sorry Linkwood!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwjZEaCucyI#t=84

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T5hYlUsQ0s

The first 30 seconds or so are really very nice. then it all goes to shit quickly.

Come on, that sproingling Roundabout bass. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it, but Yes wouldn't be Yes without it.

I suppose that's more the tone than the bassline, like how can anyone make a Rickenbacher sound so terrible? But they are tricky basses to get a good tone out of bcz their default thing they do is sproingling.

Guys, please. My bandwidth! Instead of/as well as a YouTube link please could you say name & track? Thanks!

there are loads of songs where the bassline is not shitty as in the notes sound shitty, but i'm thinking they could have done so much more with this song, like a missed opportunity, an open goal and you shanked it.

This isn't about you and your bandwidth.

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

recorded the afternoon after Flea got his first fretless. It sounds like it.

Well you know if you don't give a name/track you are essentially just posting a random string of characters next to a YouTube URL. This is not conducive to any kind of discussion.

This is not about you.

To me, the shittiest basslines are the ones that the ones that are just preposterously overplayed, distracting from rather than being part of the song they're in. (e.g. Flea as alluded to by BB above.) To illustrate, check out this version of "Here Comes The Sun" from the justly maligned Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie. The bass player is apparently trying to bring the operation down from the inside, with ridiculous 16th-note flurries and leaping all over the neck.

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

There are two bassists credited on the album: David Hungate, who was a member of Toto and a sought-after session guy, and Wilbur Bascomb, best known for playing with Jeff Beck on Wired. Whomever it was, they definitely were overthinking things here.

Good day to you, sir.

Yes, Phil D, that is definitely the school of shitty bassplaying that infuriates me the most. Showy overplaying for the pointlessness of it.

That mix on "Here Comes the Sun" isn't doing anybody any favors, for sure -- but to me, well executed pretentious bass bullshit trumps pretentious clam stew, like the Flea and Ron Wood examples I posted. Bascomb's playing (for I think it is he) is silly as hell, but he pulls it off, so it's less "oh my God turn that OFF" to my ears.

I don't have a vested interest in AFP but the couple gigs I saw, Flea was the best thing going, personal opinion obv

Flea at his best is terrific, no question.

Haha, the bassist on that Here Comes the Sun clip was taking the piss surely.

I think more likely some coked-up producer kept yelling "more like that! YEAH!! YEAH!!!" at him.

Fuck me @ that version of HCTS. wtf even is that movie?! Never heard of it, thank fuck.

O, I am not inclined to take your opinion on AfP seriously as you don't actually like RH, do you?

yeah, the lennon one on TLAWR is bad. I have nothing against simple lines but this is close to incompetence !

Off topic, but I think Scik needs to see this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-2SOVJKOqo

xp

OMG, Scik Mouthy, you are not familiar with the great Robert Stigwood Turns The Bee Gees Into The Beatles Once And For All Film? It is . . . I mean, it's so legendarily bad it isn't even funny. I believe the whole thing is on YouTube. Let's just say that, after 90 minutes of Steve Martin singing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and Frankie Howerd (!!!!) singing "Mean Mr. Mustard" and Donald Pleasance (!!!??!?!) singing "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," the movie has the audacity to end with BILLY PRESTON SINGING "GET BACK."

Re: that "Here Comes the Sun," I like to think they just gave Bascomb or Hungate a lead sheet and tempo but didn't actually tell him what the song was.

In conclusion, the movie also features "She's Leaving Home" song by vocoder robots. The end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAnK8YWpZD4

You know who owns this thread? Flea owns this thread. Basslines so bad they made *me* hate Thom Yorke.

Or...basslines so good they made me *like* Thom Yorke.

That Tool guy (the second one) with his unrestrained flanger and open string pedal bass intros zzzzzzz

You know who owns this thread? Flea owns this thread. Basslines so bad they made *me* hate Thom Yorke. Now that's shitty.

Whenever I engage in a situation where someone tries to defend RHCP, their last line of defense tends to be 'B-b-b-b-but you have to like Flea, he's an AMAZING bassplayer', which isn't wrong if you consider the incidental music from Seinfeld to be some sort of musical zenith.

A lot of 00s rock just has useless unimaginative basslines AND terrible bass playing, Mr Brightside is the first example that comes to mind but there are loads.

Yeah a lot of those 00s indie bands were riddled with shitty basslines (oh god what have I signed myself up for with this Interpol record) - I thought the Kilkers were supposed to be "dancier" or whatever and might have bouncier bass but memory of that song = alas, no.

Still not as bad as Stokes basslines tho.

I like the fiddly bits in Blister in the Sun -- they're rhythmically right where they need to be, the acoustic bass guitar timbre keeps things from being overly assertive, and it's a cool counter-melody. You want ridiculous "Hey I'm a bass genius, hello, PAY ATTENTION PLEASE" playing with an inappropriately aggressive tone that's all wrong for the song? You want Mr. Big's "To Be With You": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QD5n98R_nk

I know how to make DC's teeth shake with shitty basslines: JUSTICE

I am actually prepared to rep for Justice's bass, in that they made their shitty basslines a feature and not a bug. Which just goes to show, shitty basslines do not always sink a band.

OMG, the Welcome To The Jungle bassline! The Sweet Child O Mine bassline! GnR were one of the first metal bands I ever loved (Motorhead don't count because I didn't come to them as metal) because they had such awesome, towering, melodic basslines!

Think about Sweet Child O Mine! I don't ever think about that Slash riff, iconic as it is. I think about the bass melody that builds up underneath it during the intro. Such a sweet, sweet bassline.

― these birches is awful (Branwell Bell), Wednesday, January 29, 2014 9:10 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hum. "sweet child" has an ok bassline I guess. but "welcome to the jungle"'s is nothing, is it ? isn't it just the same riff as the rhythm guitar ?
also, I think I dislike his bass tone.

"welcome to the jungle"'s is nothing special, is it ?

Justice don't even have basslines, that's one of the things that makes them terrible, there's just this constant shitty midrange blare.

xp: The first thing that comes to mind is that awesome rumbling breakdown (you know where you are, etc.)

Are there any interesting basslines in most of the euro/electro/pop hits of the previous years ? It doesn't seem to be a key element in these productions.

one bass/guitar trend that I don't miss is the whole monolithic grunge sounds from the 90s where the guitar line is basically a sequence of chords that get repeated over and over and then the bass plays the root notes of the chords in unison with the guitar. Nirvana was ground zero for this and it was ok for a while, but got played out really quickly. Chris Novoselic often sounded like he aspired to play like Kim Deal, but couldn't quite cut it.

The interplay between Duff and Izzy (ha! those names! Duff! Izzy! Slash! Axl! They were *such* a boyband) is totally what *makes* Welcome To The Jungle, that kind of "prowling like a panther" growl. But I also really love his bass tone, it's a method to cut through the din of heavy metal in a really distinctive way.

When I tend to think of euro/electro/pop hits, so so many of them are dependent on that octave-hopping synth thing. Which I genuinely love and will happily listen to, underneath almost anything. But I guess I could make for that endless octave-synth thing as its own kind of shitty bassline when it's the only thing that ever happens in the downstairs department of a song. It is very lazy, and since I've called out other genres for lazy bass playing, I'm happy to call out that lazy cliche, too.

(Octave-hopping on an electric bass, as distinctive from disco, is always awesome. No matter what. I cannot think of a bad octave-hopping electric bassline in all of disco.)

x-post Nirvana? Shitty bass? Yes. Cosine. I think this is why I couldn't get into Nirvana for years. Shitty shitty bass.

I always liked the bassline to the first song on the first Strokes album; can't remember a single other one, though.

(As an aside, I pretty much just hate Youtube and online video in general; all me a luddite or something, I just prefer words online.)

(Personally, I really prefer someone telling me *why* they think a bassline is shitty or good, but in many many cases, providing a specific example of what is meant by badness is a shortcut to that.)

I'm really not convinced about GnR since they all seem to be pretty basic and unimaginative lines (with a bad tone !) for me but it's a question of taste, I guess !
agreed about euro/electro/pop hits.
also, a lot of the 00's RnB wasn't relying too much on good basslines (especially the timbo school, which I loved by the way). it was mostly based on synth/drums/percussions, if I remember correctly.

Basslines don't have to be played by a bass! One of the hallmarks of that era was the "bass frequency" being filled by things that were not your standard electric bass. A tuned 808 kick boom taking up that tonal frequency area can be as effective a bassline as a "bassline".

Squelchy synth bass!

eheh, OK, in that case there were awesome basslines in 00s RnB ! (still, I'm not sure a tuned 808 kick boom can be considered a bassline...).

Seem to be a few cases of bands serving primarily as a vehicle for one main member's songwriting being dull in the guitar and bass department (Oasis, Nirvana)

Coldplay.

I... I... can't recall a single Coldplay bassline, ever. But disqualified for being too easy.

Shitty basslines are kind of part of the whole Nirvana appeal, like try imagining Smells Like Teen Spirit without that lurching zombie bass.

Yeah. there's a certain brutality to Nirvana basslines; likewise early Idlewild before they chucked out Bob and got a 'musician' in.

I was mentioning Coldplay as an example of the bass not being important in "vehicle for one main member's songwriting", cos apparently, despite democratic credits, it's all Chris Martin's work while the other blow coke up their arses in St Tropez between tours.

Smashing Pumpkins seems like the elephant in this discussion but I've never listened to them closely enough to hear a bassline.

eheh, Oasis basslines is a good one !

basically, all 90s alt-rock's basslines sucked !

No, because ever band Kim Deal was involved with had awesome basslines. (Cannonball! Come on, Cannonball blows away the rest of 90s alt-rock!)

And also, to play the old saw, Blur had freaking excellent basslines, constantly. (But Alex was a massive Hook fanatic, so we're back there again.)

yeah, Blur had good ones. but I was talking about alt-rock... not britpop !

Oasis and Coldplay, tho?

Yeah, Blur's basslines are all great.

Even the shitty Blur basslines are great. Shame about the Tory tosser, though.

Today is James Jamerson's birthday. Let's all listen to "Bernadette":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLDqlgRK100

xxpost

ok busted.
basically, (rock) bands with a bass player with a strong personality have more chance to have good basslines.

shitty/uninteresting basslines from shitty/inuteresting bassplayers might be too easy.
what about shitty basslines by good/great bassplayers ?

Why are you posting James Jamerson on a "shitty basslines" thread? U MAD?!?!?!?

So we can stop thinking about shitty basslines for three minutes and bask in his genius.

OK, coz I was about to say!

The epitome of shitty bass is indeed all that horrible nu-metal six-string sludge.

Or five-string, like Limp Bizkit's "Nookie"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_RqOIliSs0

Haha, OK, yes, lock thread, you win. Hands down.

How about every KISS song ever?

I was just gonna say "Lick It Up" has the worst bass line ever.

Also "Heaven's On Fire"

Also every KISS song ever.

There's bass on Kiss songs?

Hah

there's some strand of jaunty indie pop that often has these bouncy, often fuzzy basslines that consistently irritate me. can't really name any bands though, i know it best from being an inexplicable model for every band any of my friends are in.

Merdeyeux, you mean this for example?

this is: MILLTOWN BROTHERS

song: WHICH WAY SHOULD I JUMP?

year: 1991

show: WOGAN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt289v4k1jA

xp ah yeah, that's the thing i was forgetting. the mgmt buzz bass, absolutely the worst.

The Fountain Of Salmacis by Genesis, utterly wretched.