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 M'Gill
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 M'Gill", their all-time shittest song, so I would give the thumbs-down edge to Morrison Hotel.
Mystifyingly "Maggie M'Gill" 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 M'Gill" 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).
Ooh there are a few there I would disagree with. Back Door Man is maybe not one of their greatest, but it is quite entertaining listening to a California admiral’s son in his twenties attempting to be a Mississippi blues man in his sixties. The lewd double entendre is a funny statement of intent, and casts the band’s name in a different light from the high-minded Blake / Huxley allusion. And I like the pairing with Alabama Song as marking out the two poles of the Doors’ territory: Europe and America, art and folk, Brecht and the blues.
ReplyDeleteA couple more: Five To One is thrilling adolescent rebel-rock, up there with the MC5 or the Sweet. And it gains added lustre from its superb use by Jay-Z for The Takeover.
DeleteSummer’s Almost Gone may be slight, but right now is definitely the right time of year for it. A tune I always think about as the August bank holiday / Labor Day approaches.
And one glaring omission, from the generally dire Morrison Hotel: the dismal Roadhouse Blues. I like the couplet: “I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer / Well the future is uncertain and the end is always near.” It is both funny and grimly prophetic of Morrison’s imminent future. But the music is draggy tired boogie-by-numbers.
DeleteI think what Jay-Z or his producer did there is called the lead-to-gold move. Or perhaps less transmutative and more like they extract the exciting bit and discard the clunky remainder.
Delete'Roadhouse Blues' I find one of their more dynamic blues outings but then again I don't find myself itching to play it that often, unlike 'Texas Radio and the Big Beat'
Dunno why, but it was DECADES before I twigged what Back Door Man was about. Genuinely thought it was about someone who sneaked into people's kitchens.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise I think Tell All The People and Wishful Sinful are among the better tracks on Soft Parade, and Waiting For The Sun is absolutely great.
Of course, the opposite of this is great songs by famous bands that nobody knows about. Some examples:
T-Rex - Buick McKaine
Roxy Music - If There is Something
Rolling Stones - Hey Negrita
Clash - Straight To Hell
Stranglers - Baroque Bordello
Free - Easy On My Soul
The Faces - Flying
A related question: who are the real One Miss Wonders: bands that have generally amazing discographies, but with one truly terrible track.
DeleteI have a couple of thoughts, but I don’t want to spoil whatever Simon may be planning next.
Yes that is one I've thought of doing, and also its inverse, the entirely awful band that has one miraculously wonderful song, a bizarre aberration.
DeleteIt'd be hard to find many bands who only have ONE shitsong though. Most have a few.
There are quite few contenders for shitsongs breakdowns where I am daunted by the size of the discography.
The Beatles would be an obvious next one but it's such a lot of records. The Smiths, at least, is a more compact body of work even if you factor in all the B-sides. And I know it like the back of my head, which I don't with the Beatles.
I think Roxy fans are very fond of "If There Is Something", but it is a deep cut I suppose as far as passing listeners.
Delete"Straight To Hell" is quite widely highly regarded, surely.
But yeah "Baroque Bordello" - don't you say in your book Phil that it is their best music ever?
Yes - I think BB is their finest moment - very frustrating that all the people who enthuse about Golden Brown will almost certainly never hear it.
DeleteI agree that Straight To Hell is well regarded among those in the know, but not among the great unwashed. The highest viewed Youtube clip of it has 4.2 million views after 8 years, which is not particularly impressive.
One thing I should have added about Back Door Man is that it's a much better song if you don't know what it's about. There are quite a few songs like that.
In reply to Ed, a great example of one awful track in an otherwise spotless discography is Novelty by Joy Division.
Delete(ignoring the iffy pre-Factory stuff)
/\ That's me above. /\
DeleteI really like "Novelty'. Especially the "guitar solo"
DeleteYou are right about the immaculate body of work. Something as great as "These Days" they threw away on a B-side.
DeleteNot to be overly pedantic, but The Doors shittest song is even shitter when you see it listed as "Maggie M'Gill." Something about that apostrophe really annoys, and also puts one in mind of a song that will surely be in the running when the Beatles get their turn: "Rocky Raccoon."
ReplyDeleteOh you are right, I misspelled it - and it IS shitter spelled like that.
DeleteI've amended now.
Bowie's one serious mis-step from the 70s is Across The Universe. There are a few other weak tracks (many on Lodger), but nothing so execrable. The live version of Roadhouse Blues is a real vibe killer on the otherwise blissed-out American Prayer.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I think there might be a few more. "Holy Holy" springs to mind immediately.
DeleteYeah you're a right, Roadhouse is sore thumb on the dream-drift glide of Prayer.
However, the live version of 'Roadhouse Blues' on An American Prayer is rescued by the hilarious Jim-monologue following it about being a Sagittarius, and how he thinks it's 'most philosophical of all the signs' but, after a short moment of silent reflection he repudiates all of it-- since "it's pile of bullshit." I love the interjections from one particularly vocal woman who eggs Jim on when he's being philosophical but then makes a 180° swerve when Jim says he doesn't believe in any of it. Priceless.
DeleteWell, you'd come to the table with less than "There Is A Light" if you wanted to present a broader, more complex picture of what the group was about, right? Which in the case of The Smiths might involve a conscious decision to release perverse, oddball, throwaway material which, taken alongside the great stuff, builds an image of sprezzatura, as if Morrissey and Marr were geniuses who could put out timeless classics or trivial nonsense as whimsy dictated. I've always thought they stuck "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" right after "There Is A Light" for that very reason.
ReplyDeleteYes, but that doesn't explain-excuse "Girlfriend In A Coma" or "The Draize Tain"".
DeleteI love "Some Girls" and it was just right for them to end the album on a lighter note than going out with windswept grandeur of the too-obvious finale of "There Is a Light".
It's sandwiched with delightful slightness isn't it - "Vicar in a Tutu" precedes...
Can't quarrel with The Smiths' instrumentals and cover versions being thrown in the shit bin. Not even I want to defend "Money Changes Everything"! Not sober anyway.
DeleteI'll just say that any Smiths recording penned by both Morrissey and Marr is, at minimum, good-- if taken in the more generous spirit I described above. Arguing with casual listeners or professional music critics that tracks like "Girlfriend In A Coma" are objectively good is pointless, but then context is important with a group like The Smiths. I always think of what that song sounded like in 1987, after a summer of dark rumors, the actual break-up, "whispering last goodbyes", another chance to put Morrissey idols in front of the record-buying public (Shelagh Delaney on the sleeve, Rita Tushingham from "The Leather Boys" in the video), the half-baked B-sides which are of interest to (some) Smiths fans as maybe being coded messages from Morrissey to Marr...and on a personal note I can't begin to tell you how wonderfully cool and strange it was to see 'Coma' on daytime MTV here in America sandwiched between Madonna and Whitesnake. That single served a purpose.
Obviously I'm not speaking from an objective place. The Smiths' body of work is enormously important to me. Were I to hear 'Coma' for the first time in 2026, I'd probably file it with the unfortunately ever-growing number of Morrissey's disastrous solo songs.
I do think, though, that in cases where we're talking about a "great" band or artist, their flubs and stumbles take on a different quality. I also think allowances might be made for post-Pistols indie groups that may have viewed their releases less through the lens of professionalism and more as chances to infiltrate the mainstream with, shall we say, something unexpected.
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DeleteThere's a great video clip from a recent interview with Johnny Marr where he talks about 'Some Girls'. Apparently it's been meme-ified, with the message: imagine being Johnny Marr, and you have created this most gorgeous melody and guitar line, and then Morrissey shows you the lyrics he has written to go with it.
DeleteThe interviewer puts that to Marr, who gives a lovely and very generous answer, to the effect that the lyrics actually complement the music perfectly, and Morrissey is (or was) a genius for recognising that.
Having heard that, it has made me feel completely differently about the song.
I wrestled with "Some Girls" for a bit, having fallen in love with the heavier tracks on "The Queen Is Dead" and been mystified by it-- and, yes, recognizing it might well have been an entirely different song had Morrissey given it 'serious' lyrics. I do get the meme.
DeleteAfter some time and further context, though, I love the both the song itself and its placement as the closer. Morrissey told Ian Pye in 1986: "The whole idea of womanhood is something that to me is largely unexplored. I'm realising things about women that I never realised before and 'Some Girls' is just taking it down to the basic absurdity of recognising the countours to one's body. The fact that I've scuttled through 26 years of life without ever noticing that the contours of the body are different is an outrageous farce!"
I don't quite take Morrissey at his word here, needless to say, but I think in the song such a strange perspective is a disarming and tender expression of almost childlike obliviousness which, for that precise reason, makes it a perfect one-two punch with "There Is A Light". When he sings "Send me the pillow/The one that you dream on/And I'll send you mine", quoting an old Hank Locklin tune, Morrissey seems to be putting his sentiments in quotation marks (especially given the plagiarism theme in "Cemetry Gates"), adding layers of humor and irony that reverberate through the whole album in its final fading moments.
In that article, Pye said of the album: "For every song exploring the special pain of loneliness on 'The Queen Is Dead'...there's a comic equivalent to balance things out. [It is] quite purposefully a record of extremes, it jumps with wild abandon from the tragic to the humorous". In my view that's probably a perfect answer to the meme.
Did you write this with a hangover? Pointing out the flaws of the Doors is both a chore and a bore. The Doors were a band who gleefully, questingly took risks. Even though some of their experiments failed to satisfy, their drive to explore is a key reason why we Doors fans venerate them so. I disagree enormously with your choices of shitsongs (Five to One was the Doors track most adored by my 6th form). With the debut album and LA Woman, all you've done is point out that great albums have a bit of filler.
ReplyDeleteTo be as pretentious as the Doors warrant, Jim Morrison would say that Blake, Nietzsche and Lao Tzu were great because of their flaws.
The failure of these songs is not one of over-reach!
DeleteAfter all, I have not included "Horse Latitudes" or "The Soft Parade" , which are great and genuinely experimental and ambitious.
No, it's a failure of quality control.
Or simply, a failure of quality.
It eludes them.
These are faint, feeble, half-hearted emissions, rather than bold misfires or leaps into the unknown.
lLA Woman has the same structure as Who's Next - they are both generally okay 7/10 albums book-ended by the band's two greatest songs.
Delete