SEVEN bad songs on good albums
thanks for the setup, jesp
Last week, my fellow gk! writer Jesper explained that just as good albums can contain bad songs, bad albums can contain good songs. His SEVEN focused on the former. I’m running the idea back to provide SEVEN instances of the latter.
I’d argue that of the two, this prompt is the tougher nut to crack: it’s an inevitability that most albums contain a song or two less up to par than the rest—a filler track here, an intro, outro, or interlude there—but that doesn’t make them inherently bad. I racked my brain for worse, and I recalled some; to me, the following tunes are so profoundly obnoxious, rancid in sentiment, and/or uniquely and frustratingly immersion-breaking that they (and they alone!) sully an otherwise undeniable highlight album from the artists in question. Some of these selections are widely agreed upon by fans and critics alike. Some stem from hang-ups founded in my own personal musical anathema. Disdain lies in the eye of the beholder. Behold mine.
ELVIS COSTELLO – “LITTLE TRIGGERS”
from This Year’s Model (1978)
Unlike a few selections below, “Little Triggers” features an innocuous and well-intentioned set of lyrics about passivity in a relationship. Sung by almost any one of Costello’s contemporaries (or at least with markedly different intonation), I might even dig it. He really spreads the sappiness on thick, though; his smarmy, whimpering vocal performance makes me feel like I’m being pestered by a small child who’s trying to impersonate the genuine soul and complexity of responsible, mature love. The loungy composition fits the intended romantic pining, but it goes nowhere, repeating the same motifs ad nauseam.
The kicker? I’ll admit this might sound like virtue signaling, but I really don’t want to hear this fucking dork say the word “sniggers.” I know that’s British parlance for “snickers” and as far as I can tell, there isn’t any clear linguistic consensus on which spelling came first, but it is still far, far too close to The Word That Someone With Costello’s Complexion Should Not Say for me to not get icked out every time it escapes his sniveling mouth. Lest you think I’m overplaying this whole thing, trivia time: Costello himself did infamously say it sans leading “S” once. Sincere apology after the fact, I can overlook that episode in this man’s towering career, and the rest of This Year’s Model is a great time, but when “Little Triggers” comes on, it’s me who gets triggered.
MOTÖRHEAD – “JAILBAIT”
from Ace of Spades (1980)
Sanctifying rock stars who lived and died by their own hedonistic hands is a dumb idea. Expecting their music to not reflect their indulgences is just about the only idea dumber. Motörhead wouldn’t be Motörhead without the machismo, the testosterone, the tour-grizzled bite and, on occasion, the womanizing that naturally follows from this much HARD RAWK LIFE feedback looping. Ace of Spades is the Motörhead album precisely because it exemplifies its era and the band’s essence—nearly 50 years later, it remains a staple for gruff beefcakes whose best days are well behind them and anyone who wants to roleplay some grade-A rock ‘n’ roll anti-heroism.
It also contains the song “Jailbait,” which sees Lemmy lust over girls at his shows that he knows are underage. Ace of Spades may allude to debauchery elsewhere, but this is the only track where it’s so irredeemably candid, this comfortable about its sleaziness, and miles beyond the point of plausible satire. Not even the badass riff can save it—in fact, shame on them for defacing a riff this badass with an outlook so indefensible.
THE POLICE – “MOTHER”
from Synchronicity (1983)
Full disclosure: last year, Rolling Stone released a list of not SEVEN, but FIFTY bad songs on great albums. That’s how they marketed it, anyway—take a glance (only after you’re done here, of course) and you’ll see it’s more like Fifty Bad Songs by Classic Rock Artists’ Dubiously Successful Mid-Tier Releases, but their gold recipient is wholly deserving of scorn both on the grounds of its song’s gaudiness and the rest of its album’s timeless praise.
Synchronicity is The Police’s final record together and it’s boosted by a monumental slate of singles, almost all of which atypically arrive during the album’s second half. With “Mother” planted about a quarter of the way in, it’s a miracle anyone continued far enough to hear them. As usual, Andy Summers put his foot down that he wanted at least one (1) feature as vocalist and songwriter over Sting—a fair request, as prior offerings proved he’s a competent singer and composer in his own right. These three minutes of Beefheart-inspired, over-dramatic Freudian complaints do their best to suggest the opposite.
GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR – “BLACK HELICOPTER”
from F♯ A♯ ∞ (1998)
“Black Helicopter” is an anomaly here in that it’s not a song in and of itself, but a constituent movement of F♯ A♯ ∞ centerpiece “East Hastings,” the album’s most somber and distressing landscape. Furthermore, it occupies only the final two of the full track’s eighteen minutes, an easily skippable and ultimately inconsequential sound collage. What gives? Didn’t I say interludes shouldn’t get the short end of the stick?
On principle, I’d love to look the other way, but it’s fucking unlistenable. It’s like buzzing insects multiplying in the deepest recesses of the ear canal, swarming through the cans in only the shrillest frequencies ever put to tape. If I attempt to listen through to the end—“attempt” being the key word here; I’m rarely courageous enough and usually unsuccessful—I feel like I have bugs crawling on and inside of me for several minutes afterward. If GY!BE’s intent was to unsettle, they did well—too well. I hate that this tinnitus-approximating, Guantanamo torture-tier upsetting, bad acid trip of an experiment exists, and I hate even more that it interrupts an album so deservedly lauded. They never needed to resort to this.
DEFTONES – “PINK CELLPHONE”
from Saturday Night Wrist (2006)
Long regarded as the most juvenile moment from one of nu-metal’s best-aged, still kickin’ acts, “Pink Cellphone” is twice as frustrating for almost delivering a unique, atmospheric, and haunting electronic passage aligned with Saturday Night Wrist’s hazier, dreamier character. If they’d cut it after 3 minutes and 58 seconds, there’s a case to be made that, as a surprising number of Deftones diehards will tell you, it’s one of the band’s neatest deep cuts. Then it resumes from a false ending and Annie Hardy spitballs a monologue about British people having bad teeth because they...don’t give blowjobs at buttfucking school? (Because, y’know, feces gets trapped in their uncircumcised foreskins?)
We’re all presumably adults here—I can take an absurdist joke about sloppy sex and not have a Puritanical meltdown—but putting aside that this track’s outro only saw the light of day because the band’s rapport was strained at the time, Hardy’s crass logic doesn’t even make sense. Is it an indictment or a compliment that a band of Deftones’ caliber bullshat their way through those sessions and still ended up with an album as quality as Saturday Night Wrist? Whichever answer you land on, it doesn’t take a devoted hater to know this song’s outro is downright embarrassing and should’ve landed in the trash folder once they were done having a laugh.
OCEANSIZE - “SLEEPING DOGS AND DEAD LIONS”
from Frames (2007)
A sizable contingent of Oceansize fans will holler a 10-second “cuuuuunt” in my direction for this and I get it—they’re a prog band, and prog bands should not only be allowed, but encouraged to get brazen with their songwriting.
Get real, though: every other track on Frames unspools with both internally conclusive vigor and big-picture cohesion. “Sleeping Dogs...” comes in wailing and flailing, patchworked segments deliberately undermining the album’s impeccable flow and failing to coalesce even amongst themselves. I can get down and dirty with a shot of Meshuggah-esque espresso, but there’s a time and place for it, and it’s not smack dab in the middle of an enthralling, patient, and deeply emotional closing run. Even if it were, the heaps of processing dumped on Mike Vennart’s warbling, pitchy vocal lines (not to mention Frames’ iffiest mix) have only drawn ire from me since spin number one. Any time I circle around to give this piss-take another chance, its placement as Frames’ penultimate statement leaves me bitter.
GEESE – “TRINIDAD”
from Getting Killed (2025)
I will turn 30 this fall. Try as I might to stay in the loop to whatever zeitgeists may be occurring in independent music, I know my days associated with those waves are numbered. I also know I haven’t lost the plot completely, because when households nationwide tuned into SNL a few months ago and saw Geese frantically detonate like the proverbial bomb in Cameron Winter’s car, they balked, and they were wrong to. That performance was excellent, a showcase of tension and release that transformed the song into an effective, memorable, and provocative wake-up call about...something, I guess. Dadaism, etc.
And I say “transformed” because its album version from last year’s Getting Killed, while spiritually aligned with the best traits of that performance, vitally deflates its thrust, squashed by overzealous production, duck-like guitar tones, and (if you can believe it) withheld energy. Winter and guest vocalist JPEGMAFIA hoot and holler, yes, but the rest of the band plays the groove straight and sluggishly, casting the album’s lead-off track as a tedious, monotonous, squawky mess. My experience with Geese is generally positive, if rarely glowing—I think they’re proficient musicians and often intriguing songwriters with potential to give us all plenty to talk about for years to come. I also think the further they lean into abstraction, the more they run the risk of head-assing their way into impenetrable art rock nonsense. As with some of the other tracks above, I’ve given plenty of chances to “Trinidad,” hoping it will grow on me. It hasn’t. I’ll happily start with “Cobra” when I feel like returning to Getting Killed, and Geese fans needn’t murder me for that—I’ll be dead inside soon enough, anyway.