5 Aspects of Annoying Music
As December approaches, we find ourselves relentlessly barraged not only by Mariah Carey but also by a host of her imitators eager to win the Christmas hit lottery and make a few billion for their early retirement. In the following weeks, you might feel haunted by endless clichés in the form of jingle bells, children's choirs, sappy lyrics and excruciating awkwardness void of Christmas moral message as you navigate through department stores and public spaces. On that note, I wondered, why is a certain type of music so unbearable? What is it about certain songs or performers that irritate us so much? Let's take a look at five aspects of music that annoy us.
1. Low quality
We can probably all agree that we don't like it when a singer doesn't sing in tune, has an unpleasant voice colour or some other highly annoying attribute. We also don't like poor production, a limp rhythm section, fake wailing guitars or tacky keyboard soundscapes. Even a complete amateur can recognise cheap, DIY production. In short, music of very low quality mostly irritates us and we try to escape from it as soon as possible.
One example from the past is the band The Shaggs, formed in 1965 by teenage sisters Dorothy, Betty and Helen Wiggin. Although they did not have the slightest interest in music, their father was of the opposite opinion, believing his mother's bizarre prediction that their daughters would reach musical Olympus. Unsurprisingly (given their lack of talent and diligence), they composed strange songs with out-of-tune guitars, erratic rhythmic figures, ugly melodies, and simplistic lyrics about pets and family harmony. After the re-release of their album Philosophy of the World in 1980, Rolling Stone magazine declared it the worst album ever made. However, the title attracted lovers of the absurd, and amazingly, Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain were among its fans.
2. Arrogance
Nobody likes pretentious, arrogant jerks or pompous snobs. And you'll find them in all corners of the musical world. Specific names and bands are up to you to complete as you see fit. You may even have personal experience with a pseudo-celebrity of local significance who kindly showed you how deep a hole you belong in.
In music history, we can find one shining example in the person of Screaming Lord Sutch, the pioneer of so-called shock rock. In 1970, he recorded a terrible album called Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends, where he was accompanied by rock legends such as Jimmy Page and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck and keyboardist Nicky Hopkins and bassist Noel Redding of The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Many of the guest musicians distanced themselves from the album after its release. In a 1998 BBC poll, it was even cited as the worst album ever released. Rolling Stone described the aforementioned Rock Gods as "a fouled parody of themselves". Ugh, that must have hurt. And you can still listen to it on YouTube (see video below).
3. Fake
Musicians can also get on our nerves with their lack of authenticity and pretence of something that the listener naturally suspects is not true. It may be a pop song that tries so hard to conquer the charts that it becomes a contrived imitation of success. It could be a punk band where punk happens from Friday to Sunday, but from Monday on, it's back to work, family and mortgage. It can be any pose which makes you feel that what is being presented to you is nothing more than an attack on your wallet, a dramatic underestimation of your IQ or a complete devaluation of your personal taste.
For example, the Canadian rockers Nickelback are often accused of representing an unoriginal and boring musical style, that their music is not only full of clichés but mainly lacks real content. They are also pilloried for emulating typical elements of legendary and original bands of the past and present while being too commercial and inauthentic.
4. Clichés
When Cher released "Believe" in 1998, with her voice massively modified by auto-tune, we had no idea to what extent this innocent creative idea by producer Mark Taylor would become an iconic sound in pop, rap and many other popular genres. The so-called "Cher effect" is now an annoying ubiquitous producer cliché, and all that remains of the original approach is an over-imitation and essentially a sonic obligation for the "modern" sound.
Another example is the song "Agadoo" by the British pop band Black Lace, which, although it climbed to number two in the UK Singles Chart in 1984, was voted the fourth most annoying song of all time by respondents in a Dotmusic poll in 2000. In another poll made up of a panel of music journalists, "Agadoo" even scored as the worst song of all time. The experts described it in these unflattering words: "It sounded like the school disco you were forced to attend, your middle-aged relatives forming a conga at a wedding party, a travelling DJ act based in Wolverhampton, every party cliché you ever heard." The jury also unanimously described it as "spectacularly awful".
5. Christmas, Love and Summer
To follow up on point number four, I've opted for a separate category for these extremely popular music clichés. Every Christmas, someone will try to pull a jingle bell on us, and many more heartbreaking stories are yet to be written.
And if even that doesn't work out, you still have a chance to come up with a new earworm cancer in the form of an incredibly stupid but irresistibly catchy summer hit. I won't even bother with examples. There are so many every year, that they wouldn't fit in the Yellow Pages. Pick your own most annoying favourite and share it in the comments below.
(source: Wikipedia)
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