Every great band has shit songs.
It's mystifying - you would think greatness would be like a tap, you could just turn it on and out it comes.
You would think also that being in such proximity to greatness - having produced it - the group or artist would have the ability to distinguish achieved genius from slack shite. But no, apparently not!
It's not even like these great groups sheepishly poop it out hoping we won't notice or we'll forgive them. They often seem genuinely deceived as to what their own great material is. Viz, Morrissey and Marr's belief that Strangeways, Here We Come is their best album!. (And yes we'll be getting to the Smiths in due course).
I mean, why - if you've done great - would you ever come to the table with less than "Eleanor Rigby" / "There Is Light That Never Goes Out"/"The End"/"Gimme Shelter"?
Well, I guess there's the money, and the record company breathing down your neck, and the impatient, hungry, none-too-discerning fans to please. But also, the artist's judgement seems to wane. Morrissey genuinely thinks "Shakespeare's Sister" is a great tune! He also invariably think his latest album is the best thing he's ever done.
For the debut edition, an inventory of The Doors's excrescences, their excrement.
Some groups are just level-pegging reliable suppliers of whatever it is they have to offer (I doubt if an inventory of Rockpile would yield a substantial tally of shitsong, but nor would there be a heap of greatsong either). But The Doors are a perfect example - perhaps even the ultimate example - of a group where there is a huuuuuuuuge disparity between peaks and plops. A yawning gulf.
I invite you to point out where I am mistaken ("that one is good, cloth ears!") and which specks of sorry shite I have mistaken for glistening gems and thus omitted from the list below
But comments such as "all of them", "every song" etc are not welcome. This exercise is for people who love, or at least appreciate, the band while remaining aware of the Doors flaws.
Oh yes - obviously I do not count the post-Jim albums as Doors albums. The Doors= the band fronted by Jim Morrison. An American Prayer exists in an ontologically ambiguous zone (is it part of the canon of hauntology?). I like the whole album anyway, I think it's almost shitsong-free. Whereas Other Voices and Full Circle are end to end shitsong.
Also I've not included the live albums, even though that's where (Absolutely Live) you could find the best - and for a really long time, the only - version of "The Celebration of the Lizard", Not that I would count it as a shit-song, or shit-song-suite more accurately, anyway. I love it.
The Doors - A Shitsong Inventory, Album by Album
The Doors
Twentieth Century Fox
Back Door Man
I Looked At You
Strange Days
Unhappy Girl
Waiting For The Sun
Summertime’s Almost Gone
Wintertime Love
We Could Be So Good Together
Yes, the River Knows
Five to One
The Soft Parade
Tell All the People
Easy Ride
Wishful Sinful
Waiting for the Sun
You Make Me Real
Land Ho!
Queen of the Highway
Maggie McGill
LA Woman
Been Down So Long
Crawling King Snake
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
By this calculus, Waiting for The Sun and Morrison Hotel are equal-first worst.
But then Morrison Hotel has "Maggie McGill", their all-time shittest song, so I would give the thumbs-down edge to Morrison Hotel.
Mystifyingly "Maggie McGill" appeared on Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine, the double album of greatest hits + deep cuts. Really stunk up would otherwise be a pretty great (if chronologically jumbled )selection, with a cool gatefold cover to boot.
Actually I am mistaken..."Maggie McGill" is a shitsong, but the shittestsong ever (and it's also mystifyingly included on Weird Scenes) that was recorded by The Doors during Jim's lifetime is "You Need Meat (Don't Go No Further"). That was sung by Ray Manzarek and first appeared as the B-side of "Love Her Madly". And it's really rank. I wonder what the Willie Dixon original is like.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I had to reacquaint myself with LA Woman to do this and I have to say, I'm thinking it might be their most overrated album. Despite the so-so-high heights like 'LA Woman" itself, "Texas Radio and the Big Beat", "Riders on the Storm" and "Love Her Madly", there ain't arf a lotta slothful trudging blues on there, and brisker stuff that is like Booker T and the MGs with poesy on top. But people like the narrative of "sudden twilight surge of mojo just before the End", I guess.
In an earlier assessment, I had it like this:
... the band’s journey from the bold entrance of The Doors (their best album, if suffering slightly from over-exposure) through Strange Days (their darkest and most psychedelic album), onto Waiting For The Sun (their most confused and least satisfying), The Soft Parade (their funniest and most under-rated) and the alleged return-to-bluesy form of Morrison Hotel (their dreariest and most over-rated, while still containing plenty of gems) before winding up with LA Woman (their most accomplished and poignant).
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