"The Turd in the Caviar"--Songs that Almost Derail Albums

[Glitch]

http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-t...erail,49441/1/

I was reading this old article and I wondered if you guys might want to expand on it. Everyone has favorite albums, but there's always one or two songs on them that just...don't make the cut.

Anybody have any examples? Revolution 9, off the White Album, is first on the AV Club's list. While I disagree with that particular choice, I think I could pick a song on every Beatles studio album that's a stinker. So...I will. I realize this isn't a complete list (I'm not including the Yellow Submarine soundtrack, for example).

Please Please Me: "A Taste of Honey." Not a Lennon/McCartney-penned track, but hey, they chose it. Just a very boring song.

With The Beatles: A massively underrated Beatles album. I would have to pick "All I've Got to Do". Not a bad song, but between "It Won't Be Long" and "All My Loving", it's definitely a bit of a buzzkill.

A Hard Day's Night: Another underrated album. I never liked "Any Time At All." It's "It Won't Be Long" redux--and not well.

Beatles For Sale: "Mr. Moonlight", obviously. No one likes this song. If you like this song, you need help.

Help!: "I Need You", by George Harrison. Bad beginning, bland song. But really, the whole album doesn't pick up until after "Ticket To Ride".

Rubber Soul: "The Word." All you need is love, etc. etc. Generic song on a very influential album--you wouldn't have Pet Sounds without it.

Revolver: "Love You To." Harrison only did one really good song in the style we all associate with him--the White Album's "Long, Long, Long." But hey, at least this one isn't "Blue Jay Way."

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: I don't hate the song by any means, but "Getting Better" brings us down to Earth after the transcendent opening of this seminal album. I would have bumped up "Fixing a Hole" after "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", put in "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", and continued the album with "Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite!". "Getting Better/She's Leaving Home" would have been the single that came out before Pepper.

Magical Mystery Tour: "All You Need Is Love." Sorry. It's a ridiculous, overrated song.

The Beatles (White Album): Hey, I liked "Revolution 9." I don't even mind "Ob-la-di, Ob-la da". But "Savoy Truffle" is a deeply inessential song. Sorry, George.

Abbey Road: "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" serves as a warning as to what we could expect from Paul after the breakup of the Beatles.

Let It Be: I really like this album. I really don't like "I've Got a Feeling."

That should do it...I really hope there are some ardent Beatles fans in here, or I just wasted a lot of time. Other examples are welcome!

[the G-man]

Warren Zevon. Album: "Excitable Boy." Song: "Nighttime in the Switching Yard." The rest of the album is literate LA rock-noir: The Eagles and Neil Young by way of Randy Newman and Tom Waits and then, in the middle of the album, there's a strange funk song that sounds like a incredibly white local wedding band trying to play George Clinton.

[CaptainCanada]

"That's Not Her Style", the opening track on Billy Joel's otherwise excellent Storm Front album, is markedly inferior to all the other songs.

[Count Zero]

Glitch wrote:

---

That should do it...I really hope there are some ardent Beatles fans in here, or I just wasted a lot of time.

There are, but suffice it to say that I disagree with you on most of what you stated. The only thing that I think comes close to a song almost derailing an album is "Yellow Submarine" on Revolver. I mean, really, what were they thinking?

[Alidar Jarok]

I like Maxwell's Silver Hammer.

Anyway, just to move away from Classic Rock, I thought Weezer's first album was really good, but the last song, Only in Dreams, went on for what felt like 45 minutes too long.

I'm not a huge fan of Radio Friendly Shifter Unit off of In Utero either (and I'm someone who enjoys Bleach).

[Glitch]

Count Zero wrote:

---

There are, but suffice it to say that I disagree with you on most of what you stated. The only thing that I think comes close to a song almost derailing an album is "Yellow Submarine" on Revolver. I mean, really, what were they thinking?

I wouldn't have it any other way.

As for "Yellow Submarine", it has always been odd to me how well it fits. It's the last song you could possibly expect to follow "Here, There, and Everywhere," but there the incongruity works for me...whereas "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" shouldn't be on the same album as "Something", let alone the following track.

[Glitch]

Alidar Jarok wrote:

---

Anyway, just to move away from Classic Rock, I thought Weezer's first album was really good, but the last song, Only in Dreams, went on for what felt like 45 minutes too long.
.

Weezer is pretty much a study in disappointment.

[Alidar Jarok]

After Pinkerton? I agree. But the Blue Album is quality from the first song to second to last.

[CorporalClegg]

Beatles fans have long debated whether The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album) would have been better as a single album instead of a double, but just about everyone can agree that if the album had to lose one song, it’s “Revolution 9.” The archetypical turd in the caviar, it’s a collection of noises, musical clips, and sound effects—an abrasive, sometimes disturbing sonic experiment dropped into a pop record. Not only doesn’t it fit contextually (especially between the lullaby-esque “Cry Baby Cry” and “Good Night”), but it’s also the longest track the Beatles ever released—nearly eight and a half minutes—making it extra-punishing. The song’s defenders like to complain that naysayers simply don’t get its avant-garde content, but next-level shit or not, “Revolution 9” isn’t good.

This person needs to do the human race a favor and stop listing to music.

[Glitch]

I love the AV Club, but the writers there have terrible taste in music.

[Spot's Meow]

I would say that, for the White Album, the one that sticks out to me as not belonging on the album is "Don't Pass Me By." The White Album is one of my favorite albums of all time and I generally consider it as close to perfection as possible, but this particular song is one I can gladly skip past.

[Starbreaker]

Jack Johnson's Inbetween Dreams has excellent songs... except for "Situations". I refuse to listen to that crap ever again.

[Goliath]

Huh. I was really surprised to see Ministry's "Test" at No. 24, though I have to agree: that was not a very good song. I'd actually forgotten all about it until I read that list.

I think an even better choice, though, would have been "Abortive," the last song on Ministry's third album, The Land of Rape and Honey. Seldom has a song title been so well-chosen.

What should have been one of the best songs on Beers, Steers, and Queers by the Revolting Cocks became one of the worst instead. The original album included a cover of Olivia Newton John's "Physical," but they were forced to remix it and change the lyrics over some kind of copyright problems.

"Driven Like the Snow," the penultimate song on Floodland by The Sisters of Mercy, wasn't quite a turd in the caviar, but it was noticeably inferior to the rest of the album.

Ditto for "Dead End," the second-last song on Plastic Surgery Disasters by the Dead Kennedys. Not coincidentally, it's the only song on the album credited solely to their guitarist, East Bay Ray.

But when I think of songs that almost derail albums, I think of Bites, the first album from Canadian darkwave band Skinny Puppy.

Bites is absolutely flawless--if you listen to the original Canadian LP. Unfortunately, the band, or the label, or someone, has insisted on changing the track list with every subsequent release, and every song they've added has been a turd in the caviar.

The cassette, with its three inferior "bonus" tracks, was bad enough. But the original CD release actually swapped out the original version of the best song on the album, "Assimilate," for an inferior remix. Whoever was responsible for that should have been fired.

The second CD release restored "Assimilate," but included all the bonus garbage from the cassette, plus more bonus garbage--including a terrible ten-minute song, "The Center Bullet," that wasn't even by Skinny Puppy! WTF?!?

[Count Zero]

Ah, bonus tracks ruining things reminds me of how Driving Rain by Paul McCartney was originally supposed to end in the fantastic and epic song "Rinse The Raindrops" before Paul decided to tack on the abominable "Freedom" at the end of the album.

I agree with the poster above about "Don't Pass Me By" on the White Album. I also hate "Good Night" by Ringo on the same album with a passion. But the album is more of a potpourri, anyway, so I don't mind skipping over songs that much.

[Kirby]

"Hot Dog" on Led Zepplin's In Through The Out Door