Music I Don’t Like - An Analysis
- The American Guitar Academy
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
As a musician, I think it is incredibly important to form your own personal opinions on a piece of music. I don’t really believe in the concept of a guilty pleasure as such; if you enjoy something, there is no shame in it. I happen to enjoy listening to, performing and learning many types of music - there are many lessons to be learned from having a varied taste in music. However, I find that there are equally important lessons to be learned from songs that you don’t enjoy.
In this blog post, I would like to list a few of my least favorite songs, and I will discuss what about them I can view in a positive light. How can we take something away from a song we don’t enjoy? Let us explore the idea.
Let me preface the rest of this post by saying that you should not force yourself to endure something that you just can’t stand. We should want to do this for the sake of self-improvement. Also, every opinion expressed is my own based on my feelings towards these songs, and should not affect how you feel about them.
Comfort Zones
Everyone has an area they are most comfortable performing in. This could be as simple as being a rhythm guitarist in any style, or only playing heavy metal. Some styles tend to favor certain techniques and concepts that don’t really get used anywhere else, so you either will have no knowledge of them at all, or be unable to use them effectively.
A few years ago, I was playing electric guitar for an electronic dance artist. I didn’t really like the music that much, though it wasn’t without appeal, so I set out to learn from the experience. Up to that point in my life, I had been playing music that featured a distinctive guitar part - either just strumming chords or shredding through some tricky solos. The role and the part were very specific. The concept for playing the guitar in the dance music scenario was instead to create textures and layers to the existing sound, almost emulating a pad played on the keyboard or a synthesizer. The entire idea was alien to me and I came out of the other side a more accomplished musician as a result.
Stepping out of your own personal comfort zones turns into a great experience after you put in the hard work - it isn’t easy! Have a look at my blog posts on ‘Developing Your Own Voice’ and ‘How to Stand Out as a Guitarist’.
Songs I Can’t Stand
Crazy Town - Butterfly
This song was hugely popular when I was young, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. There is no denying the commercial success of the song, but try as I might I still can’t get into it. I am not alone in this as VH1, an American television network, even ranked ‘Butterfly’ as one the ‘Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever’. I think the lyrics are cheesy, and the song is too repetitive.
What can I take away from this song? The bassline is a sample from a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song, and it is a great lesson in how to write a part for the bass guitar that doesn’t just go through the root notes of a chord progression. There is so much more harmony in this bassline than you would expect.
Metallica - The Four Horsemen
Without getting into a heated debate with myself on choosing Megadeth or Metallica, let us quickly discuss the history of this song. Dave Mustaine used to play lead guitar for Metallica before being kicked out of the band and going on to form Megadeth. This was one of the last songs he wrote before he left the former, and took it with him and turned it into the song ‘Mechanix’. At a basic level, these two songs are the same. However, ‘The Four Horsemen’ is slower and I don’t think it was executed very well. There is a certain ferocity that lends itself to ‘Mechanix’, but all is not lost for the Metallica version.
What I do like about this particular version, is that the bass guitar is played by the late Cliff Burton, one of the greatest metal bassists who ever lived. He was not afraid to play higher notes on the bass, and it really cuts through! Also, there are some creative arrangement choices which make it nearly double the length of Megadeth’s offering.
Bruno Mars - That’s What I Like (clean)
Bruno Mars is a great pop artist, and the band he uses to back him when he plays live are second to none. This song however, is just so similar to so many pop songs in that the arrangement is predictable, so this is not a comment on the song specifically but on pop music as a whole. I also happen to personally think the lyrics are a bit bland.
The little inflections to keep individual parts interesting are so cool, and I especially like the vocal harmonies in this song. Transcribing them out is really useful to understand effective ways to navigate harmony and knowing when to use it effectively.
Nirvana - In Bloom
Kurt Cobain was a great songwriter, though those skills didn’t really transfer to playing lead guitar. Your response might be “but his solo works with the song!”. Whilst that may be the opinion of some, I don’t think that is grounds for a poorly written solo - I don’t gel with the messy vibe. The solo for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on the other hand, is perfect in terms of execution and appropriately quoting the vocal melody in the verse and pre-chorus.
The riffs, however, are in a class of their own. They hit hard and work well together, all whilst supporting the vocal melody well and proving that not every chord has to be completely diatonic. For a long time I struggled to find a good fuzz sound that I thought worked well - studying ‘In Bloom’ and trying to copy the tone helped me with that.
Oasis - Wonderwall
This one is going to upset a few people, but be praised by others. The reason I don’t like this song is that it is everywhere. Nearly every guitarist learns it at some point and I’ve been asked to perform it so many times that I have lost count. So it’s not necessarily that I don’t like the song itself, just the repetition that gets to me.
However, what really interests me is the cohesive sound between the chords. The voicings are chosen specifically to have shared notes in the higher register of each chord - there’s always the D and G notes that go throughout a lot of the song. This actually made me think more critically about chord voicings and how best to serve the song, rather than playing the first shape that came to mind.
Final Thoughts
I think it is incredibly rare to find a song that is truly just awful. There are some that I think of in that respect, however, I am not going to share them here. Too many people immediately turn their noses up at something just because it is jazz or funk, and don’t even give it a chance by listening to it.
I sometimes notice that students are immediately against songs that their parents like, for no other reason than that their parents liked it first. Go and listen to some amazing melodies from Tchaikovsky, or follow the polyrhythms and time signature changes in Dream Theater’s ‘Dance of Eternity’ - anything you can do to broaden your horizons, even for the sake of just listening, can not be a bad thing!
All of the amazing teachers at The American Guitar Academy have a unique musical background, so you could always go to them for their opinions on this too.
Good luck and happy listening!