Third Edition

7. David Crosby with Phil Collins - Hero (1993)
(File under: The Usual Suspects: Songs That Are Universally Despised)

You know, looking at my notes, I see all kinds of damning phrases - "worthless reprobate filthy hippie"; "murderously bland"; "somebody please kill this fucking beast"; "MOR poisoning" - but as I listen to it, I'm struck by how much I'm digging it. I mean, Crosby was in The Byrds, right? Of course, he was also in the execrable Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Sometimes Young), but hey, how many great bands have you been a member of? And Phil Collins was in Genesis, who certain people unfortunate enough to have gone through adolescence in the early 70s claim were "rockin'", no? So how bad could it be? Answer: not bad at all! Heck, what's wrong with mellow, I ask you? And what's wrong with fossils like Crosby embracing synthesizers, even if it is 15 years too late to be cool? This guy's so cool, he doesn't need to be cool. He doesn't even worry about losing his aura of hip by joining with somebody as unhip as Phil Collins (or is Phil the one who's losing his hip aura by teaming with Crosby? I can't tell these hack baldies apart at this remove). And get a load of that lyric: "He never wondered what was right or wrong - he just knew". Hot damn! That is pretty heroic. I've met plenty of people who had no idea what was right or wrong. Babies, for instance. Those little dicks would just as soon bite you as look at you! Even when you provide their ingrate asses with clothing and shelter! Yep, these two have gone and done what People With Taste have always claimed was beyond them: they've written an Important Song! And a damn fine one, too! Sheeit, I'm humming it right now, and I'm not ashamed to admit it's bringing a tear of joy to mine cynical eye. In fact, I'm going to go on the record as saying "Hero" is one of the best songs of the past 20 years, if not the past century!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I recently suffered severe blunt cranial trauma, and should get myself to the E.R. immediately.



8. Lenny Kravitz - Fly Away (1998)
(File under: The Theory Of Alternating Decades: The '70s & '90s)

Critics who compared this guy to Hendrix and Prince were indulging in mild racism - just because he was a black man who played guitar and went the pop/rock route rather than R&B/hip hop, they were the easy (read: lazy) reference points, but musically, Lenny isn't fit to wring the sweat out of either of their t-shirts (and I'm not even a fan of Hendrix). In fact, his race shouldn't even come into it, because this music is as white as The Carpenters or Peter, Paul & Mary (who, no matter what you think of their music, at least weren't poseurs). Everybody knows Roxie Roker (of Jeffersons fame) is his mother, but after listening to the guy, I have to wonder if maybe the actor who played Mr. Willis isn't actually his father. Blander than a vegan potluck, with 5th-generation riffs only confused 12 year-olds could love, his music is Exhibit A for anyone who wants to make a case that rock died in the 90s. And though I don't doubt he has many worse songs than this, I chose it specifically because its lyric contains the Queen Mother of Horrible Rock Bullshit Stanzas:

I wish that I could fly
Into the sky
So very high
Just like a dragonfly

...And those are the very first lines! (I can't prove it, of course, but I suspect he changed that last line from "butterfly" to "dragonfly" because he thought it sounded less trite. He was wrong, as usual. It sounds equally trite either way.) Even if what follows is Thomas Pynchon (and trust me, it's not), there's no recovering from prose that insipid. I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I say this is the stupidest fucking song in the history of anything anywhere.



9. The Eagles - Witchy Woman (1972)
(File under: The Theory Of Alternating Decades: The '70s & '90s)

Surely this can't be the most misogynistic song ever to crack the top 40, but when that's the only half-decent thing you can say about a piece of music, it's probably best not to try to review it at all. I mean, you already know what they sound like anyway, and if you don't - well, then, I envy you. In fact, fuck these motherfuckers and their entire recorded (and personal) history. You know what the difference is between The Eagles and Jackson Browne? Jackson Browne's only capable of beating up one woman at a time. See, the mere process of writing about these assholes makes me a more hateful human being.

And if you ask me, they weren't laid-back enough - at least, not if they were still breathing.

Then again, perhaps I'm being needlessly harsh for effect.
Then again again, probably not.

Warning: Don't even ask me WTF is up with this video.



10. Bob Seeger & The Silver Bullet Band - Like A Rock (1986)
(File under: I Ran [So Far Away]: The '80s)



The most annoying song ever used to hawk shitty cars - even granting the "Zoom zoom zoom" jingle - and if you're not familiar with it, a look at the album cover should clue you in to what you're in store for. Hey, I didn't know Lionel Richie was in the Silver Bullet Band! Along with half the members of Toto! Although it sure explains a lot. And is anyone else surprised that this guy still had a record contract as late as '86? I've got friends who've told me that ol' Blob actually put out some garagey, MC5-style punkish stuff in the late 60s, but I've heard the same said of Ted Nugent (in re: his ultra-craptastic "psych" band The Amboy Dukes), and, having been burned once, I'm in no hurry to discover the truth for myself. Especially not from an eternally over-the-hill bargain-basement Springsteen with such an immaculately trimmed beard. Though I will admit that, as a feckless teenager, this song made my friends and I giddy because we would change the words to "Like a cock" when we sang along. Of course, we were also drunk most of the time. Ah, youth.