"The worst song that everyone likes ever"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

katstevens said this about "House Of The Rising Sun"

But what's your nomination?

Comments

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

But I liked it before I knew who Ian Curtis was! I understand how people are sick of it, or don't like the mumbling Manchester miserablist new-wave genre, but I can't see that there's anything objectively poor about it. Catchy chorus, spooky tones... Like bengraham says above, isn't it an exemplar of it's genre? How could it have been done better?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the swans cover version actually changes one key note in the chorus melody, which is what originally got me to wondering, what would it mean to say "this is an objectively poor" melody (without simply letting yourself be caught between "catchy" and "sick of it"): obviously there's an argument for saying the fragmentary lyric, the out-of-tune and perfunctory i-hate-this delivery and the bottomless ugly horribleness (on repetition) of the chorus and that 12-string guitar THING all "express the content of the song", but i think all they do this basically passively -- the situation surrounding them bleeds into the song, which is kind of a blank screen, and then out as a meaning that isn't expressed in the song itself

i think it's slight and weak, a rejected OMD song, basically -- there's a really strong (real-life) story round it, and it's poignant and awful and revealing that it should be this lame vehicle that bore the brunt of the unfolding of that story

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I am not totally sure it is THIS that bore the brunt of the story - "Atmosphere" and the whole here-are-the-young-men elegiac tone of Closer have ended up bearing more of it, if by The Story you mean the suicide, which I agree overshadows and magnetises JD's later work.

LWTUA is surely carrying the story behind the story - IC's horribly unhappy domestic life - but certainly by the time I came to JD in the late 80s it was "a standard" and semi-detached from any story, whereas the meaningful death-cult stuff was all centered on "Atmosphere" and the album. I can appreciate that in 1980 - specially with that sleeve! - LWTUA bore the brunt of it.

I've always heard it as pointing the way forward into indie, making domestic misery and self-repression into, not virtues exactly, but central subjects, things to be worried at but never resolved, and laying the ground for all the bruised boys who've plagued us ever since. Reason enough to hate it, I guess, but I still find it effective.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

on FT, there's a little cabal of dylan-hataz who are riffing off tanya to argue that dylan "can't" sing and isn't a "real" musician (in some version of a "classical-music" sense, where there are agreed-on standards not being conformed to); hence belongs in this territory

i think this is an obviously silly position re dylan -- who has an incredibly expressive technique, even if the technique is defiantly non-standard (it sortas kinda has folk roots and sanction but even so he's made it his own, if only by suriving long decades into an era when the rest of the tradition has vanished); i think what i'm getting at with curtis is he's a very one-note performer -- he's kind of like the fuzzbox sound-as-gimmick some 60s one-hit garageband plugged away at for recording after recording in hope of rekindling the success

the thing is, the content of the song is his description -- from the not-getting-it side -- of the consequences of being emotionally and expressively locked; which means what exactly do the other musicians think thy're using him as when they fashioned this shape to put him against? it's like a really raw blog post where everyone concerned is being horribly "open" but also horribly blind and unable to take responsibility for where they've got themselves to

so i guess what i'm arguing -- this will sound simultaneously moralistic and nutty -- is that a stronger song, a song they worked on properly, would actually have resolved the issues between them as band-members more sharply (either speeded the split which both sides were hurtling towards and probably badly needed; or found a way to cope and work together)... but because it's so slight in the end, it just operates as a screen that the drama is cast up against and plays out in its own time

(my only cavil at ben's version of the question -- obvious agreed-on incompetence that everyone (FSVO) still loves -- is that it's a less interesting question than the one we're pursuing; which is actual incompetence which hardly anyone notices)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

wait, yr talking about Trouble in the last two paras, right?

[strange-powers.livejournal.com]

I tend to think the song has been bound up in the context of the author for you, whereas most people are hearing it as a pop record first and a document of its own birth second. I totally agree that Curtis is a one-note performer, but if you hit a note that no-one ever really has before then you're worthy of attention. Love Will Tear Us Apart is notable because it is the junction of the destructive post-punk Joy Division were so great at, and the modern rock song.

I also suspect that the song you want would not have been the success that LWTUA has continued to be. The song sounds like a struggle for expression, like a fight to get a point across when there's no longer impetous to do so, but it sounds like pop most of all. The fumbling and mumbling, the hopelessness of the song is the very aspect that catches the imagination, not Curtis' suicide, and on that point I must refute the allegation of incompetence. It's their sound. And I honestly couldn't begin to give a stuff about the issues between the band members if something this great came out of their strife.