50 Terrible Songs on Great Albums
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With their 30-day money-back guarantee, what have you got to lose? Head to Bluehost.com to start now. I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now. I'm here with Andy Green to talk about one of the lists he posts on RollingStone.com.

That drive people insane. I guess you're a masochist, Andy. You like to make people angry because you have all these lists about things that are bad. I like doing bad things by talented people, whether it's bad movies by great directors, bad albums by a great artist, or...

In this case, it's bad songs on great albums, but they're almost guaranteed to really enrage at least one hardcore fan group that comes after me very hard on social media in the aftermath. Yes, this one was 50 terrible songs on great albums and...

To start, there is one song that you actually, upon further reflection and public reaction, you think you might have chosen the wrong song on this album. Yes, I think The Girl Is Mine is a worse song on Thriller. I should have gone with that. The dog called girl is mine.

To pull the curtain back on the process, it's tough to get 50 songs just off your own head. So I made a Google Doc. I sent it out to the music department at Rolling Stone. And somebody, they put down the lady in my life off a thriller. I listened to it. So I promise you tonight that you will always be in my heart.

I didn't know this song all that well. I thought, hey, this is not as good as Thriller or Beat It or other songs off of Thriller. I wrote it up and people got very, very, very angry at me. I listened to it a bunch more times. It's a perfectly fine song. I didn't mean to insult fans or Michael Jackson or his legacy or besmirch anything.

I didn't even pick this one, but people went insane on me on social media and that is their right. I had kind of forgotten about this song because it is the final track on Thriller. I've probably listened to Thriller 500 times and 400 of them were on cassette. And when I was very young, at least in its entirety, so I had forgotten about this song. I went back and listened to it

The truth is, it's a great song. No, it's a really great slow jam, truly. It builds. It feels like it predicts some of the R&B to come. It's written by the great Rod Temperton, who also wrote Thriller and also wrote Baby Be Mine and wrote some of the classic songs on Off the Wall. You went with a pick. You didn't think about it that much. And you were retracting it, I believe, basically.

I'm not removing it from the list on the website. I'm saying I didn't pick it. I should have given it more thought. I'm sorry to people who were insulted by it. And...

You know, it was unfortunate. Let's put it that way. Yeah, fair enough. I think some people thought, oh, you know, he didn't pick the girl as mine. They said because you didn't want to offend Paul McCartney. But the funny part about that is that the list is absolutely overflowing with Beatles songs. Yes, I wasn't trying to not insult anybody. I just listened to the song a couple of times. I'm like, I don't love this. I didn't mean to start.

a whole war against me. These lists are meant to be fun and quick and sometimes, you know, sometimes you hit a raw nerve and it was a much more beloved R&B song. It's also something that's been sampled a ton and stuff. I screwed up iCop to it, okay? I acknowledge this wasn't the ideal pick. It's tough to do 50. It definitely ranks in the Quiet Storm sort of canon list.

It does give us a chance to talk for a second about, again, about Rod Temperton, who's a fascinating guy. He also wrote Boogie Nights. He was in this band Heat Wave. So he did Boogie Nights and Always and Forever. Thriller, Michael Jackson did not write. Rod Temperton wrote. To be clear, Michael wrote Beat It. Michael wrote Billie Jean. He also wrote The Girl Is Mine. That's actually more of an insult to Michael to pick The Girl Is Mine because he didn't write The Lady In My Life. But yeah, The Girl Is Mine is a pretty white bread story.

I think Say, Say, Say is much better.

Yes, when it comes to cheesy duets between Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson say say say is definitely better. It's catchier Yes, it's has a better video if I remember correctly, of course Yeah, but yeah did the girl is my I mean the doggone girl is - is that's incredibly corny corny song I should have picked that two guys with a big age gap and you know somehow fighting over the same woman It's pretty weird. I guess either way she was gonna end up rich. She was a winner either way I think Paul was probably a better choice

Again, to emphasize that we're not shying away from the Beatles or indeed Paul McCartney, number 50 on your list is the Beatles' Maxwell Silverhammer.

This is an example of one where the whole rest of the band, besides Paul, would have agreed with you. They all comically, I think I've talked about this before with Rob Sheffield, it's so funny that even years, even decades later, all three of the other members of the band were still complaining about how many times that Paul made them record that song. Well, and you can see it in the Get Back movie they put out where you see Mal Evans is banging on the hammer at

They all seemed just so exhausted by it. Yet that was just the start. It was months and months and months of Maxwell's silver hammer. The funny thing is, Paul has never explained

what in his mind made it so worthy of such minute attention to detail. And if you read the lyrics to it, I'm not paying much attention to it. It's this really stupid story about like a serial killer. I mean, it's a, it's a stupid song when the options they had at this time from a George was writing, it could have been all things must pass or something in that spot. Very true. And that's why, you know, if you're George Harrison, you must hate that song more than anyone because,

Number 49 is another one that's like sort of easy because Bob Dylan himself has said it's his worst song, Ballad in Plain D. Fall.

Her parasite sister I had no respect As he told Cameron Crowe in 1985 in the notes for Biograph, I must have been a real schmuck to write that, which is a very funny self-assessment. It's eight minutes of him railing against his ex-girlfriend's sister in really personal, intimate ways, describing their arguments. He was in a very angry frame of mind when he wrote it, but it's like a diary entry.

And for somebody who claims to never write about his own life, who claims Blood on the Tracks isn't about his own life, that this song is just unambiguously a moment where he was extremely angry. And to put it on the record was just a crazy move. It's not a good song. I think it may have been one of the triggers for something he did so consistently going forward, which is if you look at his early drafts of songs and then the later drafts,

without fail. They've been rewritten to be less personal, less direct, less about real things. Yes. I think that's really telling. I think it's set up an avoidance of this exact thing. He was determined not to repeat this mistake. Yeah. It's a huge error and he never admits errors. He admitted to an error here. He refers to Carla as a parasite in the song. It's just so ludicrously bitter. There's a thing on this list where you, I won't say it's easy pickings, but it's,

There's definitely a theme of someone in the band who usually isn't the singer or the main songwriter getting a track. And it's sort of like you give them the pitch, they get a chance to take a swing, and they whiff. And this is one of those examples. A song from just a fantastic album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain by Pavement, called Hit the Plane Down. And as with many of these songs, it's one that I've almost blocked out despite the billions of times I've listened to that album. Hit the plane down

Play it down.

yeah it's just not a great song and malcolm is a great songwriter but bands to maintain harmony often will let one member have a song on the record so they don't go insane but it just doesn't stand up to the quality of what malcolm is can write so this one is scott camberg aka spiral stairs guitarist and he whiffed on this one yes clearly just weird without a point just not and they never play it live

Even though their catalog is pretty limited. And on the last tour, they did almost everything, but they didn't touch this one. Number 47, another legendary college Rocky band, the Pixies. The album is Doolittle. An almost perfect album, were it not for this song, Silver. And actually this other song, La La Love You, but you chose Silver. I defend La La Love You.

I enjoy that song because when I polled people for this list, I got so many suggestions to do I Love You. It's just David Lovering just saying I love you like a million times. He's their drummer. This song is just a worse song. It's boring. It goes nowhere. Just a drone. And I love the Pixies. And of course, I'll do a little, but this song does not work.

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- "Appetite for Destruction," 1987 by Guns N' Roses, a near perfect album. I guess there's a few options. There's "Think About You," there's "You're Crazy," and "Anything Goes." Those are the-- - Yeah, I played all three of them a bunch of times. And to me, "Anything Goes" is the oldest song on the record. It's from 1983. It's sort of before they formed as songwriters, I think before half the band was even part of the band. It's like a Hollywood Rose era song.

And they got better when Izzy and Slash were in the band. They got better when they got older. This is just sort of this juvenilia that they held on to. And it's just a weak song. It's almost like they didn't quite have enough space

for the album. Given the lifestyle they were living at the time, it's amazing that they had so many good songs, but I think they probably were not in a state where they could produce any more. They had Don't Cry and November Rain. That's a great point. But Axl was very candid. Axl knew it wasn't time for those near identical songs to be in.

They're really good, though. For those very good but very identical songs, you know, they held us back on purpose, but instead put, you know, this kind of mediocre song that was too old. So anyway, but, you know, still a great album. But it's interesting how albums that are held up as basically perfect aren't quite there. And in the CD era, it gets tough because when you have 70 minutes, it's a lot more likely you'll have...

a bad idea in there. So number 45, David Bowie, it ain't easy. It ain't easy.

I do not think this is a bad song. I think it's more, as you suggest, kind of an anomaly. To me, it sounds an awful lot like Led Zeppelin. A lot like Led Zeppelin. So it always freaks me out. Like they stuck a Led Zeppelin song in the middle of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Shrouders from Mars. And Bowie didn't write it. It predates the concept and the sessions. It has nothing to do with the storyline. And that album is so absurdly great.

that it stands out as just like a meh song that's good by most standards, but by Ziggy Sardis, like, Aira Bowie standards, it's weak. Number 44 is something where you would think they would have known it was not a good idea, which is the Stone Roses from their classic debut. The song is Don't Stop. ♪ Don't stop the vibration ♪

It's just the previous track, Waterfalls, played in reverse with new lyrics and additional instrumentation. Yes. Why'd they do that? Do we know? It sounds kind of cool, but it's ridiculous. And that album is also one of the best debut albums of all time.

And you get to this song and it's like, wait a minute, is this the last song backwards? It just really kills the momentum of the whole thing. Number 43 is weird in the sense that you are naming an album that is not universally considered to be a great album and then picking the worst song on it. But you're allowed. People can go back years ago and we talked about Pop by U2. I think calling it a great album is...

I think you just felt like making fun of Playboy Mansion. No, I love pop. I love pop. I'll go to my grave loving pop. I don't care what anybody says. I love it. I mean, I think there's great songs on there, several great songs on there, but I don't know about a great album. But anyway, Playboy Mansion, yes, it did augur a trend in Bono's lyrics that he...

picked up on in the 2000s too often, which is this sort of superficial cleverness. And then this, yeah, if Coke is a mystery, Michael Jackson history, and OJ is more than a drink and a Big Mac bigger than you think. And it's like, it's, it's, he, he later said that it's contemporary references were the problem, but it's also just kind of, yeah. If OJ is more than a drink.

It's possible he didn't know that O.J. was already famous in the 70s. You know, when this was 1997, that was super weird. Yeah. It didn't even make sense. No, it's just weird. It doesn't work. Number 42, The Doors from 1967. Strange days, coarse latitudes. Awkward instant! And the first animal is jettisoned! No!

It's definitely the best title for a bad song. Yeah. The 60s, they were goldmine for some of these because on some great records, they would do weird spoken word poetry or these psychedelic freakouts that could be like 12 minutes long or something. This is just Jim Morrison. Just this is just poetry that he claimed to have written as a child.

He was probably lying about that, but it's no good. I think the soul of the Native American who entered him wrote it. Yeah, I think that's it. But he wasn't a good poet, that guy. No. Yeah, I mean, in a way, it's the purest Jim Morrison that you can get.

Yeah. It's the Jim Morrison that David Crosby hated, you know, this pretentious, like I'm a poet figure that turned off a lot of people on the scene. Yeah, no, it's, it's not cool. Um,

There's a new documentary that claims that Jim Morrison is alive and working as a handyman in Syracuse, New York. So let's go find that guy and yell at him for horse latitude. That would be a story. If it's actually true, that would be the biggest rock story of all time. Yes, it's the ultimate example of big if true. I think I should go find that guy and have him be a guest on this podcast. They can't.

They can't just take one hair off his head and do a DNA test. They have to be unsure about this. MARK BLYTH: Why can't they be like, sing "Touch Me" right now?

I mean, either sing it or not. I mean, just sing, touch me. If there's any issue, apparently part of the documentary is quote unquote proof is they, is they showed a picture of this guy to two or three of Jim's ex-girlfriends and they began crying because they became convinced it was him. But I mean, that's not proof of anything. It's a,

Absurd. And if you look at any picture of him, the final weeks of his life, it's amazing that he didn't die the second the picture was taken. He was living very hard. He's dead. He's just dead. It's ridiculous. Yes, I think it's all predicated on the fact that he was the picture of health and healthy living and could not possibly die early. But anyway, but, you know, I'm...

I'm keeping an open mind. I'm not actually but kudos to the guy for getting a whole documentary about this though Yeah, really again if true very big number 41 Genesis illegal alien From the 1983 self-titled Genesis album. What else is on this album Andy? It has mama it has that's all that's all I'm by the sea It's a great record. I really love it. But in the song he adopts a very unfortunate accent and

and repeats the line, it's no fun being an illegal alien many, many times. And the video looks like a live action Speedy Gonzalez cartoon. It's as cringy as you can possibly get and very unfortunate. And the song itself, if you somehow, if you remove all that, it's still a bad song. I'm no fun being an illegal alien.

Yikes. That's all I can say is yikes. That's really bad. Number 40, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Mother Earth. Neil sometimes has these overblown...

mockish ballads. This one, instead of being about a woman, is about Mother Earth. Yes. And it's such a great record. It's one of the great Crazy Gross records. It's 1990. They came back with such fire. And then there's this song where he's just down at the organ and he cries about the environment. It's a well-meaning song.

But it's not a good song. And what made it worse is the number of times he's played it in concert. It just makes me insane. There's something about environmental activism and incredibly, probably one of the most worthy causes. And he's absolutely right. But there's something about when he sings and talks about it that's just, it's unbearable. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's unbearable. He must know it. When he played the record straight through about a year ago, he skipped this one.

Wow. I guess he doesn't love Mother Earth after all. Yeah. Shame on you, Neil. Number 39, Harry Styles, Treat People With Kindness. It's funny we use the word mawkish because this is also kind of mawkish. And it's actually similarly to the last one. It's sort of an example of very admirable message, terrible songs.

This is not Harry's high point. It's from Fine Line 2019.

It's great album. Jeremy Larson from Pitchfork had a great line, which is comparing it to Jesus Christ Superstar and Edgar Winter Group's Free Ride. And I think he's dead on. It does have that up with people musical from hell feeling to it. It takes like a very mawkish sentiment and combines it with truly irritating music. It's almost like he was trying to win a bet of how annoying he could make this song. Yes, it's very annoying. And his standards are usually pretty high. So it's a real outlier.

Number 38, we're back to the Beatles. Extremely obscure song. Extremely. It's with the Beatles, 1964. The song is Little Child. I think part of this is they made those records so quickly.

And they didn't have much time to second guess themselves. That's why there's covers on them. And this is just a throwaway song. It's a full original, just not up to their standards at all. Number 37. You know, there's a lot of songs on Taylor Swift's Red. And, you know, she would throw some duets on it.

You know, I would say Until Exile, which is an absolutely fantastic song with Bon Iver. Her male-female duets were always shaky, and this is kind of a key marker of that. She had Gary Legbody from Snow Patrol, and the song is just not... It doesn't work. It doesn't hit. This is the last time I'm asking for my name.

They recut it for the Taylor's version, Red, a brand new version with new vocals from both, and it's still bad. Number 36 is another example of a little bit of a cheap shot. It's easy to pick this spoken word weird track, but it fits into, this is your mission. Your mission is to pick...

it's not your fault that they keep putting these shitty spoken word tracks onto albums. And you know, Husker Du was a great band of the 80s, and they emulated the great bands of decades before by putting shitty spoken word songs on their album. In this case, How to Skin a Cat from the great New Day Rising 1985. Now get this.

We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and get the cat skins for nothing. Yes, and this one is also noteworthy for being very gross because it's about skidding cats and feeding their carcasses to rats. And it's just...

The real thing you skip over. Number 35, The Velvet Underground, The Murder Mystery. This is from The Velvet Underground album, 1969. A lot of this album is really accessible, but not this track so much. Yeah, it's just a very of its time song, a throwback to the John Cale era.

And next to like Pale Blue Eyes, it really stands out as just not something you want to hear many times. Number 34. And I think this is an example of how some of these, I think it must really work for me with albums that I listen to mostly on cassette, which is another one where we're hitting a lot of those. Combat Rock I had on cassette. I blocked out the existence of this song, Red Angel Dragnet.

When they made Combat Rock, they were in New York a lot. And it really picks up on the vibes of the city. And this is about the Guardian Angels. But Cosmo Vinyl, their associate, was doing the vocals on it. And it's very spoken wordy. And it's a song that you just skip right past. You play it once and you never play it again.

Number 33. This is the worst thing Kanye West ever did. Okay. Maybe not, but it's music and not even musically, but this is in his Imperial era, a phrase I hate, but he had one, uh, graduation 2007. Everything he was doing was working back then before he went insane. Um,

But not this song, Drunken Hot Girls. It's just not a good song, a very simple message to it.

And there's just no kick to it. It's just a strong outlier on this record. And he wastes the great most stuff on it. So it's just not, it's no good on any level. No. Number 32, Bob Dylan desire 1976. This is something no one understands to this day. Why he decided to write an 11 minute song about the mobster, Joey Gallo.

He got these weird causes in his head or something. I don't know how he got this in his head, if it was him or if it was if it was Jock Levy, his co-writer. As you say in your item, Dylan threw hilariously in 2009 in an interview with Bill Flanagan. Dylan

through his, much as you did for your thriller choice, he threw his collaborator under the bus. He said Jack Levy, his co-writer, basically wrote the whole song, wrote all the words. And so he just sang it. Yeah, which A, I'm sure that's not true. B, we can't ask Jack. He's long dead. C, Bob put it on the record and it's just terrible. If you put aside all the morality of it, that Joey was this vicious mobster who he's lionizing, it's an anarchy.

endless song. And that's such a good record. And Joey just, I can't stand that song. Number 31 is from a fantastic album that has a weird flaw to it. It's Yes is Fragile from 1971. You know, this is an album that has Roundabout on it and Long Distance, Runaround and Heart of the Sunrise. It's an amazing album. And especially as I've gotten more into Yes over the past decade, it's just fantastic. But they put these

shitty little instrumentals to, you know, whatever you say, you said they, you know, they're meant to be palate cleansers. But to me, they're just incredible skips, especially this one, cans and Brahms, which is this neoclassical thing. It's literally an adaptation of a symphony by Brahms. And it's deeply annoying. Yeah.

I just asked Bill Bruford about this like a week or two ago, and he explained to me that they didn't have enough songs, that they were short. So they decide each member would do one quick solo thing. And it made sense at the time. Sure. That was kind of the slogan of most of these songs, that they made sense at the time. Yeah.

So number 30, another Genesis song. You can tell this is an Andy Green list because of the Genesis. Genesis, the song is The Battle of Epping Forest from Selling England by the Pound from 1973. That's why we're in the past. Yes, it's

Yeah, it's a polarizing choice because some prog fans love this song, but the band themselves has trashed it a bunch of times and it's too wordy. It's too long and it just gets under my skin. I don't like this song. I love this record. It's one of the best prog records that's ever been made. I think hands down, no question. But this one just they missed the mark and they made the records just so quickly back then they didn't have time to sort of quality control.

I love on how many of these it has the band members themselves, the artists themselves saying, yeah, that song sucked, which is basically you've got both Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel trying to figure out what went wrong with that song. So clearly there was a problem. Yes. Number 29, another unbearable Neil Young moment from a great album. This song is such a woman. And again, it's weird because Harvest Moon was...

No one can fail me like you do

The entire record is, it's a Peggy record. He'd be the first to say so in Unknown Legend.

in motor, you know, in so many of the songs, but this one, it's so overwrought. It's just, it's like nails in a chalkboard and he must know it because he never does it live. It's the one song that's been just banished from existence by him. Number 28, another psychedelic nugget from the great album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The song is Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk. The door is locked.

I would just say there's no universe where a song with that title is a good song. No, but there's other Floyd songs with similar titles. That's like Heartful of the Axe, Eugene is a great song. But this one, it's strangely, it's the only Roger song on their first record. And Roger, if you just heard that, you would think that their bass player has no talent as a songwriter.

And oddly enough, he had immense talent and he took over the entire band in the very near future. But at this point, just Roger was not capable of writing a great Pink Floyd song and Sid Barrett was. Number 27, truly a controversial choice. We're back in Dylan land from...

1966 is beyond classic. I'm running out of, I mean, I'm running out of superlatives. Like truly one of the best albums ever made. 1966 is Blonde on Blonde. Rainy Day Women, number 12 and 35. Everybody must get stoned. Well, they'll stone you when you're

You know, I was going to argue with this, and then I was thinking about the number of times that I do skip that song when I listen to the record. Yeah, I do often skip the song. It's a throwaway, goofy song that is memorable. And everybody must get stoned. He plays it live and the fans all scream because drugs are great, you know. But it's not a good song.

Is part of it because you find it annoying that if he does play it, like people get way too excited? I think that's a part of it. So it's been years and I've heard it live. I guess he did a desert trip. But no, I don't like the song. I don't care. It's a huge hit. I don't care. It's super famous. And next to Visions of Johanna and the rest of the record, it doesn't belong. It doesn't have...

brilliance of the other songs. It's a goofy lark. He's laughing as they're doing it. It was one take. It was just... Fair enough. But yeah, if you actually look at the track listing of Blonde on Blonde, it's like pretty unfuckwittable. It's just like, it's actually insane how many great songs are on that album. So yeah, it's by that standard, eh, rainy day women, I can see what you're... And again, I do skip it. Yeah. With the Venmo debit card, you can turn the mini golf outing your coworkers paid you back for.

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Number 26. I don't even think this time fans got mad at you because you picked Madonna's Dear Jesse from Like a Prayer. And it's actually a song that Patrick Leonard, her producer, wrote for his daughter. So it's not even personal to her. Dear Jesse, you laugh.

I think that in the view of many fans, that or Ray of Light is her best record. And this song, it was a single. Like, they had big hopes for it. What were they thinking there? I think that they just misjudged it. And back then, it was almost any single of hers would be a hitch. She was at the peak of her peak. But not this one. It has that, like, annoying, overly, like, clowns at a birthday party, faux childhood innocence thing. Yeah. And it's tinkly, like, really just...

It's a little bit unintentionally unnerving. Yeah. If you write a song about your actual child, you can lose all perspective and get really schmaltzy. It actually would be a pretty good Michael Jackson song. If the land of make-believe is inside your heart, it will never leave. Yeah.

You know, we're all the, there's a golden gate. I mean, how could this not be a Michael Jackson song? There's a golden gate where all the fairies will wait and dancing moons for you. It's not good. It's, it's, it's really, and it's what's weird is when you listen to it, it barely even sounds like Madonna. You can tell. It's just a complete dog. Number 25. Number 25 is infamously one of the most annoying songs ever written by one of the greatest bands ever. It's squeeze box by the who from the who by numbers. She wears on a chest.

Daddy comes home, he never gets no rest. It's perfect for this because it's so incongruous, as you say, on this album that's so confessional and raw and honest. And then there's Mama's Got a Squeeze by She Wears on Her Chest. And with Daddy Comes Home, He Never... It's really bad. Yeah, because half the songs are like suicide notes. Yes. I mean, like, truly. It's an unbelievably dark, just stark album. Yeah.

And the single, the famous song, the one hit is this. I loathe this song. I absolutely loathe it because I love this record so much and it ruins the record. What has that jingle like catchiness? It has a very stupid, dirty joke, sort of finding some sexual parallel between an accordion and sex. And it's, it's just so,

so stupid it's weird because it is it has a similar thing to like sort of an annoyingly catchy paul mccartney song i guess when you write something very catchy even if it's bad it's very hard to just throw it out i guess but not this record they should have saved it for the next one not this one

Yeah. Mama's got a squeeze box. Daddy never sleeps at night. So poison, you said cover this all the time. Constantly. Yeah. Like, like every poison concert, like going back to the eighties. Is this, I don't know exactly what they started doing, but it's the one who's song that they do. I'm speechless. Number 24. I've actually talked about it on this podcast before. It's from Britney Spears is monumental achievement. It's fantastic album. Baby. One more time.

And it's the song Email My Heart. And I got into an argument with Rob Sheffield about this song because Rob claims this song is great. And I said, Rob, this song is not great. It's not great. It's a very 1999 song. But it's the perspective of a teenage girl who's waiting for her boyfriend to email her. And it is just groan inducing. I mean, fundamentally, besides just being kind of like a completely whack song,

ballad that's just terrible, but it's fundamentally based on the idea that this novel thing of email, it's like writing a song at the birth of the telephone and expecting just the idea that you're mentioning the telephone to carry the song. Yes. Yes. Ridiculous. There are a bunch of songs on this list that you're happy to

exist because they serve as fun time markers for the album. They're fun to talk about. So I'm not sad this song exists, but it's not good. I don't want it to be banished from the earth. I just don't like the song. I do love the fact that this guy, Eric Foster White, who also wrote From the Bottom of a Broken Heart,

probably literally made millions of dollars because Britney Spears randomly chose this shitty song to go on his album. If you had written Emo My Heart, you wouldn't have to be working now. Yeah, because that was the peak of the whole industry when she sold like 60 trillion records. Yeah, so we can shit on Emo My Heart all we want, but Eric Foster White is rolling in it. He swims in an Emo My Heart pool every day while we sit here making fun of it. So, you know, Eric Foster White...

Respect. Good for you, man. Yeah, of course. Number 23 is from a Grateful Dead album that I've never said out loud in my life, and I'm afraid to say it, but it's A-O-X-O-M-O-X-O-A. We all know what that is. Oxomoxa, I guess? I think that's it, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

to be clear i'm quite familiar with the album i've just never tried to pronounce it out loud before yeah uh and this is a you would not be able to identify this as a dead song if just played in in a vacuum no it's very 60s very avant-garde and even jerry garcia said a bunch of times that it was a failed experiment

Did the dead ever play this alive? I don't believe so. No. Wow. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's not good. Uh, classic example of a psychedelic self-indulgence on your list, which brings us to number 22, uh,

A band who their biggest selling point was always avoiding psychedelic bullshit indulgence, seemingly in their waning days trying to prove that they too can put some bullshit on their album. And this is Root Awakening No. 2 by Creedence Clearwater Revival from their album Pendulum 1970 when the band was starting to fall apart.

This is the last record with the full lineup before Tom Fogerty quit And their songs are always so short and concise clean and this was just them trying to really stretch themselves and The weird thing about credence is they were actually really good at jamming in their own way Susie Q is so incredible. Yeah when they got into a groove and Kept it it really weirdly

anticipated the sort of krautrock motorik beat that thing that can and people did this this kind of relentless thing it was psychedelic in their own way this has some cool moments but i think it's too much of an attempt to

Be something that credence was not yeah, I think that's exactly right It was not them and it was a sign that things were about to end It's also an instrumental which is you're kind of waiting for the someone should do the opposite of what? What will go on Billy Bragg did with those woody Guthrie lyrics, which is someone should write?

Should write a song over this instrumental, you know, or even John Fogarty should, John Fogarty should make it the last Creedence song and, and, and write some lyrics. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. It,

It's the kind of instrumental where at the beginning you're waiting for the song to start and then you're like, oh, I guess it's never, I guess it's just going to be this. Number 21, speaking of, again, we're back to the overblown Neil Young. And I do think the reason, besides it being an Andy Green list, I think the reason that there's so much Neil Young on here is that he did have a first thought, best thought ethos. It wasn't big on editing and self-censorship. So if he wrote a terrible overblown song, he'd probably put it on his album. Yeah.

However, this is from Harvest. You know, you knew and you mentioned in your entry that there really were two choices for the bad songs on Harvest. One is A Man Needs a Maid and one is There's a World. There's a world you're living in. No.

I think personally, to me, you picked the wrong one. You picked There's a World. I think A Man Needs a Maid is quite a bit worse. When he does that on the piano, and it's just him, it works. Not for me, but yeah. And this is so overblown on the record. The boom, boom. Well, it sounds like basically that you're going to Kong Island. Yes. Basically, that's what it sounds like. Yeah, so because of that, the orchestra is so overblown that

And it doesn't work on a record that's, you know, so not like that. If he just recorded it on the piano, but he had an orchestra and he used it in two songs and it mars an incredibly strong album. Yeah, they sound like they're from some other far worse album. I kind of like There's a World, at least compared to A Man Needs a Maid, where the sentiment is just so stupid. A man...

Yeah, it's extremely stupid and it sounds so sexist now. And then it's not just that's the passion with which he sings the sentiment. You know, there's just a disconnect between the musical intensity and the incredibly stupid lyrics that for me make it not only the worst song worse than this one, but the one of the worst Neil Young songs, period.

Well, but that's really saying something. Yeah, well, that's true. Okay. All right, fine. He made an entire album about his car and yeah. Okay. Worst Neil Young songs before 1998. How about that? That's fair. Okay. So number 20, Michael Jackson. We talked about that. Yeah.

Number 19. Yeah. I mean, take the scariest line from Elvis Presley's baby. Let's play house where he says, I'd rather see a dead little girl than to be with another man. And which I believe is just a one line in a verse in, in, in that song. But then to make it the course of a song is, is actually insane. Yeah. Yeah.

The song is The Beatles' Run For Your Life. Yes. Basically like John Lennon, I'm going to kill you, woman, which is, it's so wrong. It's beyond, it's beyond sexist. It's insane. It's insane. John had a real anger and there was some remusogy in him in this song. It's just a disaster. Well, I mean, it is interesting. And, you know, obviously he sang later, I'm just a jealous guy. He sang about, you know, and he...

apologize for the way he was, but there was a, there was an anger and a violence in him. And, and it's, and in that way, at least it's interesting and revealing of the real John Lennon, who was a much more complex figure than, you know, the caricature that kind of was propagated after his death, which is this sort of angelic avatar of peace when he was, you know, much more complex and human than that. So I guess if you're being more forgiving, at least it's, it's an obvious example of that. Right. Sure. Yeah.

But just as a song, yeah, it doesn't work either. It's got different lyrics, even. It's just not a great melody. Yeah, it's also, it's also, yeah, it's quite unnerving. And you do wonder what, you know, young female Beals fans thought of being, you know, having their lives threatened as they listened to their favorite band. I mean, imagine One Direction doing that. It's unimaginable. Number 18 is interesting. So it's from Greetings from Asbury Park, Bruce Springsteen's 1973 debut. And the song is The Angel.

The angel rides with hunchbacked children. Now, see, I've turned around. I think that Mary Queen of Arkansas is worse than the angel. I was torn about this. Mary Queen of Arkansas. I think there's something about Mary Queen of Arkansas that hits some emotional resonance with me that the angel just doesn't.

Both are the worst songs by far on the record. They shouldn't be on the record.

I just blowed the angel though. We saw that live version at the symposium and it was kind of great, but not by Bruce. It was a young student from whose name I never caught from Monmouth university, uh, found something in the song and dug into it at this Bruce Springsteen event and did a wonderful version of it. And I think that was one of the reasons where I'm like, Oh, actually Mary queen is worse. Yeah. I think the angels worse. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a tough one. I will say that, uh,

I told this story before in an interview with Backstreet's when my book came out about Bruce, but I made the mistake of, uh, I interviewed Bruce the afternoon before he played all of greetings from Asbury park live in, uh, in 2009, Buffalo, New York in 2009. And,

And, you know, he had just done All of the River. And I think it was Crush on You from the river had just miraculously come to life on stage. And I looked at him and I said, maybe it's the angel's night tonight. And he like did not even smile. So I like I wrongly assumed that he, you know, had any sense that the angel was a bad song. He never, ever, ever.

ever plays it he must know it's no good yeah i think maybe i was just exceeding my station yeah but anyway so and i actually watched them learn the angel which was pretty interesting and they had to listen to the record like the the band didn't know the song you know obviously he played it once on the tom joe tour at the royal everett hall randomly and then that in 09 and that's it in the modern era or even almost any era what i would say about the angel is it's

Sort of like the Guns N' Roses song that's a leftover. It's a leftover, not in age, but in style of these kind of Tim Buckley-esque ballads that I think he'd been writing before his fame, some of which haven't even survived, but he was writing these sort of

you know, almost undergraduate poetry sort of songs. And it definitely has that. It's, it's a leftover from when he was doing right. But I prefer zero and blind Terry or song for orphans or those. Those are better. I wouldn't even put those in that category. This was, this was when he was too young to realize that some of these were a little bit, we're sort of over effortful. They had a poetry to them, but it was a strained poetry. And I think that's probably why it was a young man's choice. Yes.

Number 17, you know, we've talked about that. Rob Sheffield has talked about this. I think he ranked it as Taylor Swift's worst song. It's Taylor Swift's Bad Blood from 1989. The album 1989 from 2014. Yeah, it's like, it's fun. I don't have so much of a problem with it. It's repetitive. I don't love it. Yeah.

I didn't love it either. And that's one of her best records. And to me, it stands out. I actually dislike Welcome to New York more. Yeah, I didn't love it either. And that's one of her best records. And to me, it stands out. And then like all the anger at Katy Perry just kind of seems silly now. Yeah, I guess that that that that that that that that.

It's sort of like that video where Billy Joel is making fun of the melody of We Didn't Start the Fire. It has a little bit. I think musically, it's just, it's very slight. So I think by that argument, I think Bad Blood is actually a better song. Number 16 is The Smiths from Strange Ways Here We Come. At the record company meeting.

On their hands a dead star I, like, honestly think this song is totally fine. I'm not sure there's anything wrong with it. This wasn't one of my picks. It was on the list. I think it's definitely the worst song on the record. It's Morrissey being especially mopey. And I know it's such a great record that it's the worst song on the album, for sure. Number 15 from the White Album, The Beatles' The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill. What did you kill?

I just don't know how you pick this one. As you mentioned, this same album has Wild Honey Pie. Wild Honey Pie!

You really can't make a case for Honey Pie, which is so annoying. I feel strongly about my pick here. I knew the White Album was going to be the toughest one. I gave this a lot of thought, and I'm like, fuck it. I'm doing Bungalow Bill. I hate this song. Piggies is worse, too. No, Piggies is worse. Wild Honey Pie is worse. I prefer those songs. I hate Bungalow Bill. Honey Pie!

Yeah, that's kind of cool. Yeah, there's this awesome Pixies cover of that song that I love. Oh, I see. Okay. But Bungalow Bill and what Yoko's, what her vocals do to it and the whole thing, it's so repetitive. It just... I actually think I like Bungalow Bill. Okay, well, you're right. And I like Rocky. You mentioned Rocky Raccoon. I like Rocky Raccoon a lot, too. No, I don't. And Goodnight is a beautiful song. I like Goodnight. Yeah, the version...

The Ringo version pales in comparison to when you finally hear the John Lennon demo. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's a recent release on the box set. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, I disagree with that one, but okay. Number 14, it's another, it's like a perfect album with a meh song on it. It's Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks, 1975. The song is Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts. Rosemary combed her hair and took a cabbage into town.

I find this song boring too. I find it very boring. Yeah. I know that some fans that saw this list that they were enraged by it. It's a long song. It's boring. I think most people skip it. For me, it's like the definition of a shaggy dog tail. Yeah. I think it's so interesting that Bob could maintain his interest long enough to even write it. God knows what it's, what it's about. Like I've never seen any theories about what it was of any meaning whatsoever. And yeah,

There's no personal connection to it. The whole album is clearly, no matter how many times he's denied it about his pain, then there's this song, and it just throws off the whole thing. I mean, I would expect there's something, and I'm sure at some point I went through the lyrics and tried to divine the meaning, but who cares? I hate this song. Number 13, yeah, Factory by Bruce Springsteen from Doctors on the Edge of Town. Every whistle blows

This is a tough one because you may say that this was an example of him, of a cliched Bruce Springsteen song, but it's also where the cliche started. It's true, but it starts here and it's almost the most cliched here.

And come on, let's go tonight, which is the original version, just a better lyric. Yeah, he had a different lyric. But, you know, it's true. I get it. I understand the criticism. For me, the fact that it's where his chronicles of working class life, something that we think he'd been doing all along, pretty much really started there. Like, you could go to night on Born to Run. You can find places, but...

really it kind of started there. So that would make me hesitant to put it on this list, but I see what you're saying, but it's such a good record and everything else. Just the better point that you make is, you know,

We know how many great outtakes there were. That's what's so crazy. For Dr. Sunday in the town, including huge hits. I mean, it's a potential huge hit songs like rendezvous. Right. So it's like if those songs, because the night, if they didn't fit the theme and mood of the record, I get that. But the promise would have worked in this slot a lot better.

Yeah. And the promise was, you know, I think he felt he didn't have the right take of it, but it turns out he did. He sure did. And I think it felt too close to the bone, I think, which is again, a thing that people do. Yeah. I get that, but it was a mistake. All right. So number 12, the Eagles try and love again from hotel California, which even if you don't like the Eagles, you really have to admit there's a great album. Oh,

This song is just like not much of anything. No, it was letting Randy Meisner get one song, which was very noble, but it's super generic. Number 11. It's like a town in Florida in the 50s, you know?

I don't know, there's a lot of white buildings. I mean, this is really one of the things that's the apotheosis of this list. So Homegrown is this great lost Neil Young album. Although I will say as a whole, you know, it's really listening to in its totality. I was a little, I maintain that it was, it's a little disappointing. That doesn't quite live up to its legend. I mean, part of it is because he had released some of the songs before.

trickled them out on other albums. So that blunted the impact. So maybe you can never really experience the way you're supposed to experience it, which is a very foolish thing to do to an album. But this is just, it's actually insane. It's, it's, it's unbearable to listen to. It just makes sense in the context of it's the dream he's describing in the next song. Sure. But in and of itself, the sound of the finger on the wine glass is,

It's painful to listen to it. It's just, it's these drunk-slung hippies that are just like, just speaking nonsense to each other. It's incredibly annoying. It's one of the ultimate skip tracks of all time. And it makes you actually mad at Neil Young for putting this shit on his album. It's just, it's because it's painful to listen to. Yeah, it's horrible.

Yes. It's true. And also the stuff he's saying is disturbing as well. And it's like, it is like a nightmare. I understand he was trying to embody a nightmare. And it was reflecting his insecurities and fears of his kid being taken away and the divorce. All that is true, but you shouldn't make us listen to it. It's indefensible, I would say. It's truly indefensible. Yes.

So number 10 on the Stooges self-titled 1969 album, which, you know, basically invented punk. As you say, it has, I want to be your dog and no fun in 1969. And then it has this thing. We will fall. Yeah. It's the psychedelic freak out that never ends. And they were so good at having short, concise, brilliant songs that,

But this seems so 1969, so self-indulgent, so against the whole ethos of the Stooges. Number nine, The Beatles, Good Morning, Good Morning from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967. Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning.

Nothing to do with you.

but good morning. I just, I've always loved that song, which is why it's here. So it's interesting. Number eight is, uh, from the who sell out from 1967 by the who I'm a bad who fan because I never, this is not an album. I love nearly as much as all who fans. I just, for some reason it just never connected me. It has some great stuff on it, but this is, this is this song. Silas stingy. Once upon a time there lived an old miser man by the name of Silas Dean.

And it's in this vein, it's in the vein of who songs like happy Jack, this weird sort of, I was trying to figure out how to describe it as sort of like a little bit of English music hall. By the way, you know, the funniest thing about English music hall is it's a thing that people who write about music have been referring to for 40 years. And I, I really questioned the percentage of people who use that description who've ever heard actual music. I'm sure never. I'm sure never. I,

I'd say like 3% have, it's sort of, it's sort of like skiffle. Like a lot of people don't really know what skiffle is. Uh, but yeah, English musical. Have I ever heard English musical? I'm quite honestly, I'll confess. I'm not sure, but I know it sounds like this shit. And it, but there's also that sort of, yeah, like childlike fairytale thing. I don't know. It's, it's, it's a weird, uh,

Vibe that they would get into. And this is one of the worst examples of that. Yeah, it's so repetitive. Not good. There goes Minji Stingy. Yeah. Just a thousand times in a row. It's a John Entwistle song and not the main songwriter of The Who, but he had some great ones. This was not an example of that. He got better as a songwriter. Number seven from Surf's Up by the Beach Boys from 1971, Student Demonstration Time. There's a student demonstration time.

Kind of an infamous track, actually. It's infamous in Surf's Up is a really overlooked Beach Boys classic record. It's strong straight through. It's Carl at his peak. It's all of them are working so well. And then Mike does this stupid, stupid rewrite of Riot and Cell Block 9. And the lyrics are, they read like a parody, but they're the actual lyrics.

Yeah, Four Martyrs earned a new degree, the Bachelor of Bullets. Now, you don't want to laugh about Kent State, but that's the closest you can come. Yeah, it's just, my God, it's such a bad song.

Number six is Simon and Garfunkel, Voices of Old People from Bookends, 1968. I got little in this world. I give, honestly, without regret, $100 for that picture. This is another, it's sort of a cheat because it's not really even a song. I try to not feature skits or anything or little things like that. But this is a prominent track on the record. And it's so depressing. It's

It's just our uncle went to these two nursing homes and recorded the old people talking about being old. And when you think about the rest of the album, how strong it is on songs like America and Old Friends, and you have this. You could do an entire list of bad hip-hop skits, actually. Oh, there's so many of them. So, number five, also not a song. It's from Black Sabbath, Volume 4 from 1972. It's the track, can't call it a song, FX. ♪

They were incredibly high in cocaine one night, and they started to just make noises on the guitar. They rubbed their crosses against the guitar, and it's just a sound collage. It's like, if you're high enough, I could see how it has some merit. I can imagine Brian Eno saying it's actually the best Black Sabbath song. Sure, but it's not. It's a sign that they were so into drugs, the music was starting to really suffer. Their process was collapsing.

Speaking of which, number four, Elton John, Jamaica Jerkoff from Goodbye, Yalbrick Road, 1973. It features some of the tropes of this list. Weird accents, incongruous genres. He does this reggae song. He tries to sing to make an accent. You say that Bernie Taupin, his lyricist, has no memory of even writing it. Yes.

We're all happy in Jamaica. Do Jamaica jerk off that way? No. No. No. Sorry, Elton. Hard pass. Immediate no. Number three, you picked Guns N' Roses' My World from Use Your Illusion 2. You want to step into my world? It's a socialist iconoclastic.

How many times have you... I believe that there are worse songs on the Use Your Illusion albums. I like My World because it's so crazy that Axl snuck into the studio and recorded this industrial pseudo-rap song. And didn't tell the band. They didn't know about it until the album was out. Now you're going to step into my world. It's a sociopsychotic street of bliss. I love it. I actually love it. Okay, I...

It's so stupid. And it just, I don't know. I don't like the song. It's that those albums are so bloated. It's just so obviously it should have been one record. For some reason, I periodically put on those albums and every time I'm reminded that it's, it's stunning how weak they can be. Uh, yeah. And the best songs were older outtakes. Yeah.

They just lost the thread. There's a lot of just generic rocking out on those albums. It's worse than... I would say to people who have memories of it, it's worse than you think. Yeah, it was already a band that was falling apart, that weren't working as a unit, and it's very obvious. Number two...

This is another cheap shot. Seamus from Pink Floyd's Metal, 1971. Some Pink Floyd fans got mad when I wrote a cover story about Dark Side of the Moon and mocked songs like this from their early albums. There's a lot of self-indulgence. It's a dog barking. Steve Marriott's dog. It's Steve Marriott's dog.

and it's a really great record that people tend to sort of glide past the pre-dark side stuff but those are some good records i love this i think that is the best pre-dark side record but in the middle it's just this dog barking this ridiculous song so of its time that should not have been on the record it's ridiculous

Yeah, I mean, and Echoes was fully in the vein of all the great stuff they do later. They had actually nailed it. If they'd made a whole album like Echoes, they would have already been doing Dark Side of the Moon, basically. It's so weird that you could be executing Echoes and then also be like, well, let's throw a track where there's some random blue shit and a barking dog. It's hard to say what they were thinking other than they were really high. They were stoned. It was filler. They weren't thinking it through. Yeah.

Number one, I had to go back and listen to remind me just how bad this song was. It's bad in every way. It's bad musically. The lyrics are really creepy and disturbing unintentionally. It's from the great album Synchronicity by The Police from 1983 and has songs as good as Synchronicity 2 and Evergreen.

Every Breath You Take, King of Pain, which are just Sting operating on the highest level possible. And then Andy Summers, who I love, he's a great guitar player, contributed this song. The music is super odd. And he's saying, every girl I go out with becomes my mother.

in the end. It feels way too, like you said, it seems like something that should have been kept between him and his therapist and not thrown out in the middle. It seems almost hostile to Sting. It seems almost like a weird fuck you to Sting into your own band to put a song that bad next to an album with King of Pain on it.

I think this is the ultimate example of a band of people who loathed each other, truly loathed each other. And they resented Sting that he got so much more money for writing all the songs and the attention that he would give, he would give each of them one song per record.

Changes to just appease them. But this is what happens. It does feel like a hostile gesture. Yes. In the middle of this, like Grammy winning legendary mega selling album, you're working out both your personal animus against, you know, possibly your mother and your girlfriends and against sting. It's Andy. Great guitar player. Not your finest moment though. No, it's a terrible, terrible song. Well, Andy, we've learned a lot today. Thank you for joining me as always. Of course. It was fun.

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