Slam! Music Reviews That PWN

[sadchild]

Here's a place to collect lines from harsh music reviews. Like...

Album: Quiet Riot - Condition Critical
Review: "Condition Terminal"
Link

Album: GTR - GTR
Review: "SHT"
Link

My inspiration for the thread was re-reading a couple of song reviews I did 10-12 years ago for 411mania. So it's also a place I want to dump a few things I wrote back then that still make me chuckle.

Song: Ting Tings "Shut Up And Let Me Go"
Review: "In a constant string of contradictions, [Katie White] first declares, "Shut up and let me go," and then follows it with, "It's you that ought to be holding me." Then she announces, "This hurts, I tell you so," followed by, "This hurts, but I can't show." I can't stress enough the importance of proofreading. I will be suggesting to your guidance counselor that you take a leave of absence from the cheerleading team until your lyrics show improvement."

Song: Metallica "The Day That Never Comes"
Review: If you went back in time to 1985 and played "The Day That Never Comes" for Cliff Burton, he'd probably punch you in the face. And rightly so.

Song: Jet "She's A Genius"
Review: "Jet's drummer, Chris Cester, told Billboard magazine that "Genius" is "about a girl who does things that just take it to the next level in your mind," proving once again that drummers should not be allowed to do interviews."

 

[HecticArt]

Album: GTR - GTR
Review: "SHT"

 

[scotchandcigar]

I came across this Pitchfork review of Greta Van Fleet's 2018 breakout album Anthem of the Peaceful Army. They gave it a 1.6 (out of 10)

Greta Van Fleet: Anthem of the Peaceful Army

The debut from the young Michigan rock band is stiff, hackneyed, overly precious retro-fetishism.

pitchfork.com

"Greta Van Fleet sound like they did weed exactly once, called the cops, and tried to record a Led Zeppelin album before they arrested themselves. It’s a costume—Greta Van Fleet is all costume. And if things that look like another thing is your thing, get ready to throw your lighters up for a band whose guiding principle seems to be reading the worst Grand Funk Railroad songs as if they were a religious text."

 

[sadchild]

Boom!

Bonus: I agree with it

 

[Channel98]

Bob Dylan's 1970 double album Self Portrait included strings and remakes of Blue Moon, Let It Be Me, Early Morning Rain, Gotta Travel On, The Boxer, Take A Message To Mary and I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know. Griel Marcus reviewed the album for Rolling Stone. He began, "What is this shit?"

Years later, Marcus insisted his review wasn't as negative as people believe. He said he asked "What is this shit?" because that is what Dylan fans were asking. Ummm.....okay.

 

[Channel98]

John Mendelsohn reviewed the debut album by the blues combo Led Zeppelin in the March 15, 1969 issue of Rolling Stone. "Blues combo." That's what he called them.

"Led Zeppelin: Blues combo dead on arrival

Jimmy Page is, admittedly, an extraordinarily proficient blues guitarist and explorer of his instrument’s electronic capabilities. Unfortunately, he is also a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs. The most representative cut is How Many More Times. Here a jazzy introduction gives way to a driving guitar-dominated background for Robert Plant’s strained and unconvincing shouting. Zeppelin has produced an album sadly reminiscent of the Jeff Beck Group’s Truth. To fill the void created by the demise of Cream, they will have to find some material worthy of their collective attention."

Among the "weak, unimaginative songs" were Dazed & Confused, Communication Breakdown, I Can't Quit You Baby and Babe I'm Gonna Leave You. Oy vey!

 

[sadchild]

Zing!

Bonus: While I don't dislike LZ1, I'm not a big fan either. I would put II, III, IV, Houses and Graffiti above it. Looking at the nine tracks, I could hum four of them. The other five, I'd have to hear again to remember them.

 

[sadchild]

I wrote this about three years before her death. It's mean, but I still stand by it.

Whitney Houston – I Look To You

Should Whitney Houston have come back into the music biz? Hell to the no. Listening to Houston sing "poor me" lyrics on top of bland music is like eating a plain rice cake on an undecorated paper plate and trying to decide which had more flavor –- the rice cake or the paper plate. The lyrics, penned by "amateur videographer" R Kelly, basically tell the story of Houston's last 10+ years. They can be summed up as, "I've screwed up in every way a human being can possibly screw up. So now I look to God because that's about the last bridge I haven't completely burnt." To quote Lisa Simpson, "Prayer, the last refuge of a scoundrel."

Her live rendition of "Look" last week on Good Morning America could quite possibly earn her a shiny second-place trophy from just about any karaoke bar across the nation, providing there was no stiff competition from the locals.

I stand by this one too. What a back-pedal...

Florence + The Machine – Kiss With A Fist

"'Kiss with a Fist' is NOT a song about domestic violence," insists Florence Welch, the namesake of Florence + The Machine. "The song is not about one person being attacked, or any actual physical violence. There are no victims in this song. Sometimes the love two people have for each other is a destructive force. But they can't have it any other way, because it's what holds them together."

You hit me once, I hit you back,
You gave a kick, I gave a slap,
You smashed a plate over my head...
I broke your jaw once before,
I spilled your blood upon the floor,
You broke my leg in return...
A kick to the teeth is good for some,
A kiss with a fist is better then none."

Obviously about domestic violence, right? The message is clear – better to stay in an abusive relationship than to be alone. Coming in at just over 2 minutes, "Kiss" is a short, pop-punk number that is unnecessarily simplistic and tiresomely repetitive. Makes me want to smash someone over the head with a plate. And by that, of course, I'm not talking about any actual physical violence. Sometimes the dislike of a song is a destructive force blah blah blah.

And a third one from 2009.

Madonna & Lil Wayne – Revolver

Reportedly rapper Flo Rida and girl-smoocher Katy Perry had already rejected "Revolver" before the old gray Madge decided to embrace it and sing it like a tired, old cougar on the prowl at a local dive bar. That's probably why her voice is hidden behind more vocal effects than a T-Pain song. Even the song's producer tried to make an open plea begging fans to encourage Madonna and her manager to fix her vocal tracks. The cheesy I'm-a-sex-machine lyrics are bad enough without the thought of them coming from some broad who is moments away from her golden years. But the nightmare doesn't end there. My least favorite rapper, Lil Wayne, appears toward the end to offer his two cents, contributing more cheesy gun/penis metaphors to a track already loaded with too many. And the music shows that she now steals her sound from the pop music progeny that once aimed to emulate her.

 

[sadchild]

Songs of 2021

From the NY Post:

Kanye West featuring Syleena Johnson, “Donda Chant”

Yeezy finally introduced his long-awaited 10th studio album, “Donda,” with 52 seconds of Johnson chanting his beloved late mother’s name 60 times. Even if Ye’s heart was in the right place, this song probably had Mom rolling over in her grave.

From Variety:

Van Morrison, 'They Own the Media'

Morrison’s records used to go gold or platinum; now they go tinfoil. He was on everyone’s worst lists last year for an infamous series of anti-lockdown singles that should have been kept in quarantine forever ... the wide open spaces of a double album just allowed him a vaster playground to rant about mostly vague conspiracies he believes are turning the world to sheeple.

Kid Rock, 'Don't Tell Me How to Live'

You’d think any song that starts out of the gate with an insanely wealthy white man of 50 earnestly yelling “Fuck all you hoes” has nowhere to go but up, but this one never gets there, as he spends the next several minutes owning the libs with lines like “Kiss my ass, then you can suck a dick,” “You snowflakes, here’s a news flash” and “Yo, homie, here’s the situation: A nation of pussies is our next generation!”

Sarah Brand, 'Red Dress'

When Brand’s “Red Dress” video went viral this year, it begged all kinds of other cosmic mysteries, too. Like: Is this satirical, or real? What key is the song in? What key are any of the notes in? If someone tried to write it out as sheet music, would the universe implode?

 

[scotchandcigar]

I use the site Metacritic.com to search album releases. It's easy to rank albums by reviewer score, and then start at the end (lowest score). Here's just a few I grabbed (pubs on left, users on right) -

 

[sadchild]

"like being ambushed by the cast of a Broadway musical"

 

[HecticArt]

There are some great slams there!
That seems like a site you could get lost in.

 

[scotchandcigar]

There are some great slams there!
That seems like a site you could get lost in.

I don't remember how I came across the site (it was many years ago), but it's great for music, movies, TV, and game reviews. They aggregate the review scores from every review publication, and they do a best of the year every year. For music, they cover the indie scene very well.

 

[HecticArt]

I was late(r) to work today because I was messing around on the site.
Unfortunately, you can sort by reverse order on an iPad.
Maybe that was for the better.....

 

[sadchild]

The Gold Album: 18th Dynasty by Tyga
By Meaghan Garvey
REVIEWED: July 1, 2015

Tyga couldn't string two coherent lines together to save his life: each bar is a dead end, completely unrelated to the one that came before it. ... Tyga raps like his bars are transcribed on the insides of fortune cookies that he must break open individually.

Tyga: The Gold Album: 18th Dynasty

As Tyga would tell it, The Gold Album is his "serious" album, the one where he stops being polite and starts getting real. Instead, we have 12 microwave-nuked approximations of Drake and Kanye songs, with none of the wit, soul, or edge.

pitchfork.com

 

[HecticArt]

That is freaking awesome.
The only line that's missing is "Tyga couldn't rap a gift!"

 

[sadchild]

Eoghan Quigg [self-titled] 2009

"Eoghan Quigg ... came third to Alexandra in last year's The X Factor and two weeks ago released the worst album in the history of recorded sound. You'd have been right to have predicted that his self-titled album would be fairly bad, but it's not just bad in the way this sort of album is usually bad ... It's an objectively bad album so bad that it would count as a new low for popular culture were it possible to class as either culture or popular."

 

[HecticArt]

But its a great picture of his hair....

 

[sadchild]

Rolling Stone gave Andrew Ridgely (the other half of Wham) a 1/2 star review on his 1990 solo album Son Of Albert. I wish I could find the text of the review. The only thing I can find is: "On the credibility scale, Andrew Ridgeley falls somewhere between LaToya Jackson and oblivion." Ridgeley later said: “It was disappointing and depressing to receive quite such a beating over that album.”

Hot 100 [5/26/90]





Honestly, while it's not good I've certainly heard 100+ worse songs that made the Hot 100 in the 90s for sure.

 

[Channel98]

In Rolling Stone #86 (July 8, 1971), Jon Landau rammed his criticism of Paul McCartney's Ram down our throats. Here are excerpts:

"Ram represents the nadir in the decomposition of Sixties rock thus far.....It is so lacking in the taste that was one of the hallmarks of the Beatles that it strongly suggests Paul is not happy in his role as a solo artist, no matter how much he protests to the contrary.....McCartney creates music with a fully developed veneer, little intensity and no energy......very bad album."

The review is at Ram