If You Could Strike One Song from Existence, What Would it Be?

Here’s your task: you’ve been given the ability to remove one song from the face of the Earth. Completely. It will no longer be played on the radio, in commercials, in movies, anywhere. What song do you pick?

For my part, I wanted to pick something that was an older song, yet was still showing up frequently - no sense in striking something that’s already disappeared (like that Titanic song), or that’s ubiquitous now but will likely be gone in a matter of months anyway.

So I select: “Melt With You”. Begone, nonsensical irritating 80s pop song!

Since this is one of my all-time favorite songs, you force me to invent a time machine and send a Terminator back to eliminate your parents before you were born, thus preventing this catastrophe.

As for selecting one of my own, that’s impossible. There’s so much stuff out there that I can’t stand (i.e. all rap) that eliminating one particular song would have a negligible effect. It’s easier just to change the channel, or listen to my own music collection.

Wow, that’s a tough one. So many choices: “Cum on Feel the Noise”, “Darling Nikki”, something by Sondheim, the first country song to be based on a pun thereby nipping the trend in the bud…

At the moment I choose George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” I’m not sure anything has been said more gracelessly without the intention of being crude.

All rap? Allllll rap? That seems silly to me. There’s such a vast variety in rap, from political rap to comedy rap to dance rap to nerd rap. Jazzy rap, rock rap, country rap. To dislike all rap is to dislike a wildly disparate set of sounds and styles and philosophies.

Now, I think you could easily say “I don’t like the violence/misogyny/materialism in rap”, or “I don’t like kind of commercial rap that gets most of the mainstream radio airplay.”, but there’s still a lot of rap out there that isn’t like that.

Imagine by John Lennon. While a good song on its own, all the misty eyed cover versions featuring people of all races and religions who are “changing the world” annoy me to no end.

“Next Year”, Foo Fighters

I love that band but that song makes me want to claw my face off. It’s like Grohl decided that one line was enough to carry a song.

If I could do it retroactively, it would have to be “Ring My Bell.” I believe that song must have destroyed several dozen of my IQ points out back in 1979 and 1980. It seemed that you couldn’t go anywhere or turn on any radio station without it playing, with those three goddamn words repeating over and over again.

Yeah, I don’t like most hiphop, but even I like some rap. Some of it is really quite intellectually engaging, either in sentiment or in poetry. But I must say the majority is pretty inane. On the other hand, the majority of all pop is inane in any era: I think there may not have been a single good track in all of Disco.

Slade - Merry Christmas. I don’t think I need to explain why.

“God Bless the USA,” by Lee Greenwood. That song brings out the worst in the worst people.

“We Built This City” by Starship.

“Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits. I love Dire Straits, I truly do, they’re one of my all-time favourite bands. Seeing “Private Investigations” performed in concert was a religious experience for me. Romeo and Juliet can still bring tears to my eyes.

And they’ll be forever remembered as the “Get your money for nothing and your chicks for free” guys. And 99% of the world doesn’t understand the irony.

Yes, all rap. The form itself is annoying to me. Take one of the most innocuous versions of that, the rap portion of Blondie’s “Rapture,” and it’s like taking a drill to my ear. It’s not music to me. It’s chanting, and nonmusical chanting at that. They are deliberately not singing the words.

So your example of a rap you can’t stand is a terrible 30 year old rap from a non-rapper in a New Wave band?

This. So much this. This song is the equivalent of Triumph of the Will in music.

Anything by Barry Manilow.

Margaritaville. While we’re at it, I’d like to strike all the people who like it from existence.

I’d strike the portion of “Princes of the Universe” that comes after the utterly awesome part that everybody knows. If you’ve heard the whole song, you know EXACTLY what I mean.

There is NO other choice.

“I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” is an abomination.

It’s a tough choice between that and some stuff by Bryan Adams, but for the good of humanity Greenwood must go.