Tracks you skip on albums

[PaulTMA]

The Weezers' Island In The Sun.

Quite possibly the worst song they've ever released, and it still mystifies me as to why it's been added as a 'bonus track' on subsequent Weezer releases.

Hip hip!

Wow, crazy talk.  I'd put it in their top 10 songs and would only skip it due to it's over-exposure outwith my own listening discretion.  It was added to the European version of 'Maladroit' as it was their biggest ever hit on the continent (no. 1 in France, I believe) and was still riding high when the inferior follow-up album was "dropped" prematurely, by modern standards.  The crap live version on the European version of 'Make Believe' is no less necessary, of course.

Do you really think it's among their worst, down there with 'Cold Dark World', 'Heart Songs' and 'Everybody Get Dangerous'?  Yikes.

[ThickAndCreamy]

The Weezers' Island In The Sun.

Quite possibly the worst song they've ever released, and it still mystifies me as to why it's been added as a 'bonus track' on subsequent Weezer releases.

Hip hip!

Seriously? That's the only single decent song on The Green Album to me and the only good song I think they've made since Pinkerton.

To me Island In The Sun wouldn't go a miss on The Blue Album and is a great song within a very poor album.

[Morrisfan82]

To me Island In The Sun wouldn't go a miss on The Blue Album

You may be thinking that because Island In The Sun is a poor rehash of I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams...

Standing on its own, Island In the Sun is a fairly nice sunny tune but it's a bit throwaway (a persistent problem with later Weezer material).

To be honest, I'm still reeling from Ambient Sheep's blasphemy about Death Of The Prodigy Dancers, but there you go. Mind you, we never saw eye-to-eye about FSOL's Accelerator, so it's not that big a surprise.

As for Too Long by Daft Punk, I think it makes itself totally worthwhile when the chopped-up discoey bit comes in. Veridis Quo, on the the other hand, is a textbook example of a track I always skip, it's the only song on that album I don't like. I didn't want to listen to Fade To Grey by Visage in the first place, let alone a pastiche of it...

I agree about skits as well, in all but the rarest of occurrences they completely fuck up the flow of an album for me.

[non capisco]

'Skit' is one of those words that's changed its original meaning from those twenty second 'humourous' fuckabouts on De La Soul's first album. (Are they to bamlem for skits?) It made me laugh a few years back when someone in the workplace was playing a DMX album and there was a thirty second sound effect of him swearing and shooting someone, titled 'Skit'. Oh, DMX, you and your delightfully whimsical skits.

[thehungerartist]

'The Girl Who Wanted To Be God' on Manics' Everything Must Go

'Unhappy Birthday' on Strangeways by The Smiths

'Carnival Song' on Goodbye And Hello by the better Buckley.

[trotsky assortment]

'Carnival Song' is not as skippable as the almost unlistenable 'Jungle Fire' from Tim Buckley's 'Starsailor'.

[aaaaaaaaaargh!]

I kind of pretend that the last track on The Queen Is Dead is There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.  I can't stand Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others.


As for The Stone Roses' Second Coming, I think it's a cracking album so long as you skip Driving South, Straight to The Man, Good Times, Tears and How Do You Sleep.

[El Unicornio, mang]

'The Girl Who Wanted To Be God' on Manics' Everything Must Go

'Unhappy Birthday' on Strangeways by The Smiths

I tend to skip "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me", it's just boring. And "Death at One's Elbow" is crap but too short to bother skipping it.

As for The Stone Roses' Second Coming, I think it's a cracking album so long as you skip Tears

Ooh, that's my fave song on the album!

[niat]

Meanwhile, on OK Computer, I'll quite happily leave "Fitter, Happier" running, but then skip forward over both "Electioneering" and "Climbing Up The Walls". Just a noisy racket and a boring drone-a-thon, respectively.

I can see where you're coming from with Electioneering, though I don't usually skip it, but the "boring drone-a-thon" of "Climbing Up The Walls" is my favourite song on the album, and one of my fave Radiohead tracks of all time, ever.

Opinions, eh? Everyone's got 'em.

[aaaaaaaaaargh!]

I tend to skip "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me", it's just boring.

Heh, it's one of my favourite Smiths tracks!

Ooh, that's my fave song on the album!

I'm going to give it another go, but I can't see me agreeing with it although I do like some of the Roses' Led Zep style numbers.  Just strikes me as being a wee bit turgid.

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

I kind of pretend that the last track on The Queen Is Dead is There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.  I can't stand Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others.

Really? TQID is one of the few albums I have that I think has no weak track. Unhappy Birthday was a big bag of bollocks though.

[Custard]

I once worked with someone who skipped everything on The La's record except There She Goes.

Haven't seen him in about 6 years. Good.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Does anyone find themselves skipping tracks more as they get older? When I was a kid first getting into music I never skipped any tunes, which I convinced myself meant that I must have really good taste. Nowadays however I'll write off an entire album if it doesn't grab me within a few listens.

Have I become more discerning or just less patient?

[Tom Pynchon's Photo]

One of the reasons I like it so much is that I first heard it on The Beat where they were showing Reading '94 highlights, and it opens with Thom covering Jeff Buckley's 'Sing a Song' (he had died that week, I think) I'm not a big 'My Iron Lung' fan either, it's from a live show too so sounds a bit out of place, although it's still my favourite Radiohead album

Tim Buckley's Sing a Song (Jeff died in 1997).

[youtube=425,350]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TPtSVouKW10[/youtube]

Which reminds, the album it's on - Happy Sad - has a track I tend to skip called Gypsy Woman. Not a bad tune by itself, just a bit too much of an up tune on an otherwise very chilled out, mellow, album.

And Echo and the Bunnymen's Porcupline, great track after great rack, until the last two which are brain-curdlingly dull. I tried listening to them for the first time in years recently. They hadn't improved.

[Ambient Sheep]

To be honest, I'm still reeling from Ambient Sheep's blasphemy about Death Of The Prodigy Dancers, but there you go.

From what little I remember of it, it wasn't so much the music, as the crass bellowing into microphones that annoyed me.  _{^{(Is that better, or have I just made things even worse?)}}  It's certainly nowhere near as bad as Massive Attack's final-track abortion, surely you're not defending that?  (Not that you said you were, but just checking!)

Mind you, we never saw eye-to-eye about FSOL's Accelerator, so it's not that big a surprise.

Well I was about to say, "Yeah actually, now I've got my CD collection back from Swansea, I must give that another go, as I've been meaning to for years", but glancing over to my right, to my horror I notice it's missing.  I knew Lifeforms had walked (and it was a limited edition, I seem to remember), but not Accelerator too!  Bollocks!  So I'm just left with both versions of ISDN, Dead Cities, and more remixes of "Papua New Guinea" than I can shake a stick at.  I'm also fairly sure I had the CD single of "Cascade", but that seems to have walked as well.  :-(

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

I can see where you're coming from with Electioneering, though I don't usually skip it, but the "boring drone-a-thon" of "Climbing Up The Walls" is my favourite song on the album, and one of my fave Radiohead tracks of all time, ever.

I can take or leave both tracks myself. I think Electioneering's the most boring song on the album and I have to be in the right mood for CUtW, as it does sometimes feel to drag on for ages. It is however redeemed by the fantastic contrasting transition into No Surprises.

[purlieu]

Well I was about to say, "Yeah actually, now I've got my CD collection back from Swansea, I must give that another go, as I've been meaning to for years", but glancing over to my right, to my horror I notice it's missing.  I knew Lifeforms had walked (and it was a limited edition, I seem to remember), but not Accelerator too!  Bollocks!  So I'm just left with both versions of ISDN, Dead Cities, and more remixes of "Papua New Guinea" than I can shake a stick at.  I'm also fairly sure I had the CD single of "Cascade", but that seems to have walked as well.  :-(

Welcome to my worst nightmare.
Also, you don't have Environments or the other archive stuff?

[trotsky assortment]

Frank Zappa - Uncle Meat Film Excerpt Part 1.

An absolute waste of over thirty-seven minutes.

[trotsky assortment]

Is that black and white clip of Tim Buckley's 'Sing A Song For You' available on the 'My Fleeting House' DVD? 

[Egyptian Feast]

Frank Zappa - Uncle Meat Film Excerpt Part 1.

An absolute waste of over thirty-seven minutes.

You should try watching the film. Hideous.

[trotsky assortment]

Despite going through a Zappa phase at the moment, I don't think my patience would stretch that far.  I always had an inkling it would be bad.  ...And, of course, that's only the commercially released 1h40m (ish) version. 

[Egyptian Feast]

Despite going through a Zappa phase at the moment, I don't think my patience would stretch that far.  I always had an inkling it would be bad.  ...And, of course, that's only the commercially released 1h40m (ish) version. 

Speaking as a huge fan of 200 Motels and (to a lesser extent) Baby Snakes, I found it almost unwatchable. The clips from the concert documented on Ahead Of Their Time are fun, but 'self-indulgent' is almost too kind a description of the rest of it.

[Steve Lampkins]

Does anyone find themselves skipping tracks more as they get older? When I was a kid first getting into music I never skipped any tunes, which I convinced myself meant that I must have really good taste. Nowadays however I'll write off an entire album if it doesn't grab me within a few listens.

Have I become more discerning or just less patient?

Everything is just so available now, with the internet and all. It used to be that you'd play a new CD to death, get your money's worth, read the liner notes, enjoy the special treat of buying something.

Now if something doesn't grab me, I just skip it, click a new YouTube link, or just grab something else. You used to have to rely on friends, trust them when they recommended a band - now a throwaway comment in a random post can have you listening to a new artist within seconds.

We are all getting older though. I flit from here to there, distracted by work, the internet, TV, anything. Maybe I do find it harder to concentrate nowadays. I read books, newspapers, and magazines quite rarely, but read forums, the news, and articles online for hours everyday. This was an interesting article: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

[thehungerartist]

I kind of pretend that the last track on The Queen Is Dead is There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.  I can't stand Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others.

Aargh! aaaaaaaaaargh! 'Some Girls' is a fantastic song. Fair enough, the lyrics are a bit facile but musically... come on!

This is the live version from Brixton gig 86 and you'd have to be deaf to not enjoy at least the first minute of it:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/jdqhdj

I'm another who skips 'Sulk' on The Bends but can't ever bring myself to bypass anything on OK Computer.

[aaaaaaaaaargh!]

Aargh! aaaaaaaaaargh! 'Some Girls' is a fantastic song. Fair enough, the lyrics are a bit facile but musically... come on!

Yeah, but context is everything for me within TQID.  'Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others' suffers terribly because it comes after 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' which is a song which is pretty much impossible to top, I mean, where do you go from there.  The final track is hideously anti-climactic, if it was somewhere else in the album it probably wouldn't matter so much, but it is such a let down after TIALTNGO".

[purlieu]

That's the only way you can follow There Is A Light.  You couldn't put another serious song there because it'd just pale in comparison.

[aaaaaaaaaargh!]

I don't think it should have been followed by any song, serious or otherwise.  I think pretty much anything after that song on that album would pale in comparison.

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

I have to disagree with you aaaaaaaaargh. Some Girls feels right to me, like a coda, the way it fades in (and then goes back down, and then up again...). Like a little afterthought or epilogue. I feel the same way about Please Please Please Let Me...

[James "End-To-End" Benton]

Some Girls feels right to me, like a coda, the way it fades in (and then goes back down, and then up again...). Like a little afterthought or epilogue.

Engineers and producers often "spoil" mixes they send to record companies so they cannot be used. The most common way of doing this is by whacking the faders down to just below half (to throw to haywire the noise reduction systems) within the first 30 seconds - just as in "Some Girls". It means the client gets a good idea of the mix but also something totally unreleasable.

Normally this is done to ensure payment for a track. My only guess is that production on all aspects of TQID was so behind schedule, and Rough Trade were in such a hurry to get it out, they didn't bother to check the master too thoroughly.

[LC]

Some Girls is beautiful, a nice way to end the album but There is a Light would've been better, obviously. Em, that live version ain't no cop, Guv.