Songs marred by bad production

[Guybrush]

Yo!

Sometimes decent or even great songs are unfortunately marred by bad decisions at either the recording stage, mixing or mastering. Somewhere in the production chain, things went south.

Are there any examples of this that you find particularly unfortunate or irritating?

I heard a recent example of this when I heard Morrissey's (yeah yeah) new single, Rebels Without Applause.

The track sounds overly compressed. The drums squashy and lack top end. In fact the whole track sounds like it needs some air and space to breathe.

However, the thing that really makes me unable to enjoy it is the mixing of the vocals which have been severely quantized ("snapped" to perfect timing) and autotuned in a way that's neither subtle or cool as an effect. This is not a man who needs a lot of autotuning, so this choice is baffling to me. I expect many who know him will feel somewhat of an uncanny valley effect listening to this, like he's being mimicked by an AI. Worse still, you can hear autotune artifacts in the track. Listen to around the 2:40 - 2:50 mark.

For a comparison of how to better produce Moz, here's a link to his single from 2018, Spent the Day in Bed.

[Guybrush]

So Rapper's Delight is the longest song I know. I don't mind the sound of it, but why doesn't it ever end?

[Lexi Darling]

So Rapper's Delight is the longest song I know. I don't mind the sound of it, but why doesn't it ever end?

You must not listen to prog rock then, haha.

In the case of Rapper's Delight, I believe it's that long partly because it's meant to imitate the tradition of a group of MCs passing the mic at a party. That song was one of the first commercially released rap songs, but the genre itself had been around for a few years as a live phenomenon that DJs and MCs in NYC did at block parties. Those party jams would last for a lot longer than a 3 minute radio single, so the record is probably constructed to emulate that.

In addition, a lot of 12 inch club music records have extended runtimes to allow the DJ to have ample time to cue up the record and transition it into and out of their set.

I would say the precise reason for Rapper's Delight being that long likely lies somewhere in between those two facts.

[Guybrush]

You must not listen to prog rock then, haha.

In the case of Rapper's Delight, I believe it's that long partly because it's meant to imitate the tradition of a group of MCs passing the mic at a party. That song was one of the first commercially released rap songs, but the genre itself had been around for a few years as a live phenomenon that DJs and MCs in NYC did at block parties. Those party jams would last for a lot longer than a 3 minute radio single, so the record is probably constructed to emulate that.

In addition, a lot of 12 inch club music records have extended runtimes to allow the DJ to have ample time to cue up the record and transition it into and out of their set.

I would say the precise reason for Rapper's Delight being that long likely lies somewhere in between those two facts.

Yes, sounds like a probable explanation. I've heard tales of a documentary out there that probably also answers this exact question.

I listen to lots of prog rock btw. When I wrote "longest" I meant more in terms of outstaying its welcome

[SGR]

One of the first examples that pops in my head is the Manic Street Preachers Lifeblood album. Everything is too loud - but particularly the vocals are way too high in the mix. It's unfortunate, because I really do love the music.