Friday, April 20, 2007

Top Five On Friday - 4/20/07

Today's Top Five is kind of a downer, but we enjoy it anyway!

Top 5 album "killers." (you know, songs that ruined an album in one way or another)

1) "Run For Your Life" by The Beatles from Rubber Soul. We get a gem of an album, topped by the beautiful "In My Life," and then at the end we get a huge letdown in "Run For Your Life." It just makes you feel bad, really. If you're not familiar with the song, the first lyrics of the song are "Well, I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man." Gee, don't you think dumping her would be an easier task, John? Gives me the creeps.

2) "Lily (My One and Only)" by Smashing Pumpkins from Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. "Take Me Down," James Iha's snooze-fest, would be my second choice of album killer for this album. You've heard me rant against this song before, and I'm gonna do it again. This song is just bad! I always skip over it. Mellon Collie may have been a perfect album if not for this pile of garbage.

3) "Problems" by Robert Randolph and the Family Band from Unclassified. The rest of the album is filled with upbeat gospel-influenced dance tunes and some groovy, deep soul. This song, on the other hand, sounds like the soundtrack to an after-school special. It's too slow, it's too sappy and the lyrics are too cheesy and cliched. At least "Soul Refreshing" puts some smooth funk into the mix. "Problems" just makes me depressed, so I always skip it.

4) "She's So Fine" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience from Axis: Bold As Love. This would have worked better as an instrumental, I think. The music is fine, but the singing is poor. Jimi may not have been the best singer, but he's quite an improvement on Noel Redding's soulless mumbling. I also cannot bear the high-pitched background vocals. Did we really need those, boys?

5) "Talk" by Coldplay from X&Y. I used to like this song - until I heard it about a half billion times on the radio. The rest of the album is still good, but this song was far too overplayed for my taste. It's still a good song, but I'm sick of it nonetheless.

3 comments:

The Mistress of the Dark said...

Your right...Run For Your Life is a very very creepy song.

Mal Kiely [Lancelots Pram] said...

Yeah, 'Run For Your Life" was, as Lennon later attested, was a last-minute 'throwaway' song to fill-in the last few remaining minutes of the albums track running time! Ya, it's an absolute throw away, hey? heh heh
And yeah, Hendrix wasn't the greatest singer, I agree... he should have just wiped the vox off that track and played it as an album track instead... oh wells. It was the late 60's... who knew *what* they were doing back then?! heh heh
Cyalayta
Mal :)

bob_vinyl said...

I agree that "Run for Your Life" has a creepiness to it, but I like it on Rubber Soul, because that's the album where the Beatles lost their innocence. It's not my favorite track on the album, but I like it and I think it fits.