I keep a very short list of songs that I consider the worst songs ever, and excluding the stuff that we all know is bad (boy bands, novelty songs, Rascal Flatts, etc.) the radio-stalwart classic-rock portion of my list is pretty exclusive — “Katmandu” by Bob Seger, “Centerfield” by John Fogerty, “I Got My Mind Set On You” by George Harrison, and maybe a few more, but most ‘bad’ songs are just harmlessly forgettable (like, say, John Mellencamp’s career) rather than really, truly botheringly terrible.
Over the weekend, I heard a song on the radio that I’ve heard a thousand times before but never really grasped the depth of its suckiness — I would like to welcome to the club of Lamest Classic Rock Songs Ever, “Take It To The Limit” by The Eagles:
After the jump, five reasons why this song has jumped to the top of my elite list of objectively terrible classic rock tunes:
1) There are no instruments in this song. It’s just sound happening. No guitar, no bass, just this sort of pseudo-string noise that stays there for five goddamn minutes. And someone bumps into a drum kit every half minute or so.
2) The last TWO MINUTES of the five-minute song are Randy Meisner repeating “Take It To The Limit” again and again and again. Even Van Morrison hears this song and goes “dude, we got the title already, lets wrap this sh*t up.”
3) During the two-minute breakdown at the end, the other band members (and Meisner’s voice looped) are making noises like they’re in extreme pain — it’s almost as if this band is fully aware of the piece of sh*t they’re about to unleash on the Billboard charts and their conscience finally gets to them before the song finishes.
4) The song takes more than thirty seconds to fade out. It’s like the end of Return of the King in song form (though it won 35 fewer Oscars).
5) Could “Take It To The Limit” possibly be a more vague, half-assed refrain for a song? Maybe they should’ve gone with “Do Things Good” or “Be Nice” or “Stuff!”
Other classic rock radio stalwarts you absolutely can’t stand? Leave ‘em in the comments (last one to leave an “I hate the f*cking EAGLES!” comment is a rotten egg…)
