Monday, July 03, 2006

It's My Opinion and I'm Right

Okay, along the same lines as the "Signature Song" question, here's another:
Name a song (or songs) that you feel best illustrates how your view of the song widely diverges from the popular sentiment about the song. That could either way -- a song popularly held as great that you don't think is very good; or a song popularly held as awful that you think is under-appreciated. Most importantly, explain why you chose the song you did.
I'll give you an example: the song Baba O'Reilly, by The Who, is often considered to be one of the better songs on the "Who's Next" album. The open synthesizer riff and the defiant vocals are supposed to add up to a great song opening for a great album. But my problem is I don't think that song is all that good, to be honest. It's definitely not the weakest Who song of all, nor is my least favorite song on that album. It's simply that my opinion of that song is quite a bit different from what I perceive is the popular sentiment about the song.

I don't much care for the song because I don't like anthemic songs -- "Teenage wasteland / it's only teenage wasteland / I'm wasted!" -- it seems to me to be rather short of the significance others feel the song conveys. And I believe the opening synthesizer riff is too long.

Another example -- and this will get your hackles up -- I've never found the song "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles to be as great a song as others make it out to be. I see no particular pattern to the lyrics (a common fault, not only the Beatles, particularly for that era, though "I Am The Walrus" surely ranks up there as one of the sillier sets of lyrics ever). And I've heard some speak of the final piano chord with such reverence you'd think they believed it was some kind of special revelation or something. In this case -- and perhaps the same with Baba O'Reilly -- what I'm doing is rejecting the perceived importance of the song.

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