Feb 5, 2007
Musical oddities
I’m sure I’ve written about this before, but I can’t find it on the site, so excuse the duplication.
My entrant for worst musical bridge ever? The bit in the middle of Lionel Richie’s Say You, Say Me. It’s at about 2:50 in this clip:
Thing is, SYSM is a plodding, end-of-the-school-disco kind of smoochalong song. It’s not very exciting, but then, it’s not supposed to be. It only exists to go on romantic soundtrack compilation albums and to provide a backing track for teenage acned fumbling. Except suddenly, nearly three minutes into the croonfest, Richie suddenly decided to insert a segment of a completely other song entirely – something with a beat and a tempo twice that of the other part of the song, and which sits next to it like Pamela Anderson sharing a bed with the Queen Mum.
It must have confused a fair few slowdancing school-leavers when it came out: one minute you’re wrapped in the arms of the one you fancy, the next moment you’re pranged apart by jerky mid-eighties dancing. Life’s unfair, isn’t it?
Bizarre.
Mind you, speaking of bizarre, c/o my erstwhile deskbuddy I’ve just become aware that Michael Jackson has a song in which he sings about being a vegetable and being eaten like a buffet. I kid you not.
Check out this Karaoke version of Wanna Be Startin’ Somthing’ for proof (references to sprouts etc begin at about 2:08):
What was life like before YouTube?
Agree on the Lionel Richie thing – how bizarre.
My entrant for worst musical bridge:
Live And Let Die – faux reggae, just awful. Sometimes, I’m with Heather.
The meat-and-potatoes drumbreak around 2:30 in Sting’s floaty, jazzy An Englishman in New York always seemed horribly out of place to me.
[Does Lionel really sing, "I had an awesome dream"? Awesome like a hot-dog?]
Re Live and Let Die – you’re right, the cod reggae sucks, but the reggae version of the *whole song* by Byron Lee and the Dragonaires is pretty damn good, actually.
they did great reggae versions of lots of pop hits – j’aime non plus is a personal fave…
For the avoidance of doubt, here’s Live and Let Die:
Cod-reggae starts at 1:11. Dear god.
Haha. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to the whole of “Say You, Say Me” before… but now I will make sure I do from now on. That’s hilarious!!!!
And… the random bridge in Live and Let Die is also funny :) Thanks for the amusement!
Worst musical bridge ever? I’ll give you two for the price of one…
Mike, that was so bad I listened to it 4 times in a row just to prove to myself that yes, it was really happening. And when my ears stop bleeding I’m gonna go back and do it all over again :-)
Jen
Oh, these aren’t too bad – especially compared to the aimless noodling of the first middle-eight in Go Let It Out by Oasis (about 1:20 here)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNubWMuzP3Q
- incidentally, all 3 of these (Go Let It Out, Say You Say Me, Live And Let Die) also qualify for your list of “imperative song titles”:
http://meish.org/2002/12/31/all-polonial-and-bossy/
…obviously I’m a bit late to this but I reckon this’d have a lot of overlap with most songs that have the word “Me” in the title, and ditto “Let’s” if you’re going to allow that as the first-person plural, eg Let’s Talk About Sex, Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall In Love), Let’s Get It Started, Let’s Dance, Let’s Twist Again, Let’s Get It On, Let’s Stay Together, Let’s Go All The Way, Let’s Spend The Night Together (via googling for
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lyrics let’s etc)
For real ear invigorating action – these two songs sound particularly frightening when overlapped.