Popular songs you actually don’t like

[GodDamnVampire]

Neighbours a few doors away have been out in the garden, having a bbq and playing music.
Earlier, they played ‘Sweet Caroline’ on loop 4 times 🤪
I remember reading somewhere (maybe on MN?!) that some people can’t stand this song.
Personally, I don’t mind it, but maybe 4 times is a bit much!.

Are you a fan?
What other songs which are deemed “popular” but actually grates on your nerves?
Mine are Seal’s Kiss From a Rose, The B-52s Love Shack and Fairground Attraction’s Perfect - just for starters!

Proud Mary. I'm not a fan of TT's Simply the Best either. Over-done to the nth degree by bands in pubs with female singers.

That song from the 90s "Dance the night away" 🤮

Got my mind set on you by George Harrison 🤮

I like the original version of Proud Mary by Credence Clearwater Revival. The Tina Turner version is a cover but seems better known. Sadly it's my daughter's favourite song!

The original of It Wasn't Me is indeed creepy; but the parody called Caught One Handed is very funny (if a little bit rude)!

I always understood that as in the same vein as Wichita Lineman, when he sings "I need you more than want you; and I want you for all time".

Basically just a romantic way of saying 'I will love you forever' - i.e. 'the stars would all have to disappear before I could ever stop loving you'.

Good to see Mr Shiteside by The Killers isn’t universally loved.
Their song Human is another one for me. Thankfully doesn’t get played as much now. Stupid lyrics.

Black Eyed Peas - I’ve Gotta Feeling. It’s like listening to a CD that sort of still plays but gets stuck and then jumps forward a few seconds. Plays for a bit and gets stuck again. Repeat the cycle. Dull, repetitive crud.

Britney Spears - Toxic. I’m not a fan anyway but everything about this one grates.
Katrina & The Waves - Walking On Sunshine.
The Grease soundtrack! 😆I don’t mind Frankie Valli’s “Grease” though weirdly.

Harry Styles - Treat People With Kindness. Is this popular? I don’t know. I can imagine my primary school Headteacher jumping on this and we’d have been made to sing it in assemblies. Pass me the sick bucket!

People keep mentioning this Mr Brightside by The Killers - I'd actually never heard of it. So I gave it a listen on YouTube - meh.

I really hate “Girls Just a
Wanna Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper

I approve of and agree violently with all the creepy Cliff Richard loathing.

Planesmistakenforstars · Today 16:43

"Walk of Life by Dire Straits is awful, but any of that ilk of granddad rock or soft rock is cringe."

</Reaches for smelling salts.../>

Anything by Cliff Richard.

Harry Styles - Treat People With Kindness. Is this popular? I don’t know. I can imagine my primary school Headteacher jumping on this and we’d have been made to sing it in assemblies. Pass me the sick bucket!

Yes, this exactly! Back in the olden days, when I was in primary school, we were played Man In The Mirror by Michael Jackson - that great moral teacher of children!

I am not surprised and you have my sympathy, believe me! Talk about a coincidence because one of the songs the Headteacher at our school got us to sing was Heal The World. We’d sing the first verse and chorus but Headteacher would say, “once more,” as soon as we’d finish the chorus and then we’d repeat the chorus again and again and again. 😱I was still occasionally randomly getting it as an ear worm 10 years after I’d left.

Well it's ok, but it's just the same verse twice & a couple of choruses. Doesn't really deserve all the love it gets (usually by radio stations!)

I am a Mr Brightside fan..
I can’t abide ‘Red alert ‘ by Basement jaxx as it sounds like a dentist drill at times. Makes me shudder!

Among many other songs suggested on here, I agree with whoever said “all Elton John”. DH almost convinced me to like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, but then I listened properly to the lyrics and the line “I’m going back to my plough”. Now I just imagine Elton trying to plough a field. In sparkly glasses

I know he doesn't write the lyrics himself, but I always wonder what on earth Bernie was thinking when he wrote "If I were a sculptor... but then again... No!"

The very epitome of 'written on a Friday at 5 to 5 before the pub'!

Oh gosh yes, I despise that bloody song. I once read someone say "if I was a sculptor but then again no - why mention it then?" Oh and rhyming 'words' with 'world' in the chorus. The whole song sounds like an amateurish pile of crap. I just have to hear those opening bars of piano for me reaching for the off button, or jumping out of a taxi if it comes on when I'm a passenger 🤣

Those i dislike quite a lot of popular artists that to me, come under 'Hacks'. So, yes, they have talent and have tapped onto something popular but in my opinion, no sensibility.

I's the difference between a knack for writing or performing catchy product and something genuinely affecting or that says something even if not as memorable. They may be very skilled or original but it leaves me cold.

So Queen, Elton John, Adele, Alicia Keys, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Pink, Simon and Garfunkel are , to me, hacks. Britney isn't, Madonna isn't, despite being very derivative. Paul McCartney (to some degree) is without the others especially John Lennon. He was balanced out well in the Beatles.

These guys have struck upon very successful formulae but it's strictly business. Eg, I'd argue Patti Smith is. I'd say Harry Styles is a bit of a hack, Yungblud isn't. Donovan was a bit (although I like him), Bert Jansch definitely wasn't.

I think that Bernie Taupin lived on a farm in the US and I always thought the plough reference was because of this ? As in ‘ going back ‘ !
Although I am usually wrong and might be because it just rhymes.
I also think that he is thinking ‘ if I were a sculptor’ in ‘ your song ‘ as in then I’d have more money and could have a statue that he could make of her or something like that ? But then it’s no , because he isn’t one !
( if that makes any sense at all )

They were both probably on a few drugs when they wrote these lyrics too ( if the Rocket man film is anything to go by )

I thought that Bernie Taupin was brought up on a farm in Lincolnshire, and that's where the reference comes from?

Agree! It was bad enough when I thought it was about Bill Wyman and the 13-year-old Mandy Smith, but later I came to imagine Jimmy Savile singing it to a succession of bewildered girls who'd made the mistake of getting into his car.

Yes, it does mention a farm in the song

Yep, it would definitely have been better just as an instrumental - rather than with those embarrassingly awful lyrics.