#BEST EASY LISTENING SONGS 70S FULL#

I guess the guy is - sad? Sure, because he’s full of “woe, woe, woe - feelings!” The repetition reinforces the inarticulateness of the sentiment. Feelings? WHAT feelings? Emotions are just by-products of events one doesn’t go around HAVING them! (Which is the problem with almost all of these songs). The song went to #6 on the pop charts but was a sort of national joke five minutes after it was released. This would be an excellent theme song for Michael Corleone in that scene in Godfather, Part II. I don’t go for any song that has the word “seed” in it, you know what I mean? I don’t want to picture this ugly old dude doing it with his wife - and I’m way older and uglier than he was! And what’s all this about “HIS baby”? The woman is just the receptacle, I guess. In 1974, (15 years after his most recent hit), Paul Anka, now a middle-aged, concave chested, necklace wearing Vegas dude, recorded this treacly peaen to the barefoot and pregnant.

I mean, if I wanted to hang out with someone who reminds me of Bobby Beausoleil, I’d call Bobby Beausoleil. Do you really want James Taylor’s help? I mean, the price tag is that it comes in the form of James Taylor. Now there’s a guy who’ll drop whatever he’s doing (because he’s actually doing something) and come over and fix the sink or kill the spider. But something about Taylor’s version makes him sound pathetic and lame, like he literally is waiting around for that phone call.įor a song on a similar theme with a little more grit to it I vastly prefer Billy Swann’s 1974 “I Can Help”. I love it when it’s coming out of the mouth of its writer, the unimpeachably great Carole King. He sounds like he probably wants to give you a shoulder massage with his clammy, fish-like flippers, reeking of patchouli. “JT” is my musical bete noir, with his Kermit the Frog voice, his soporific tempos and his icky touchy-feely vibe. That will never happen with James Taylor. But a person shouldn’t be dogmatic, so I’ve been testing the waters by giving some of them another belated hearing. I didn’t want any guilt by association, and I simply hated most of “that kind of music”. For example, I used to keep most of the “easy listening” artists in a sort of mental pen. I’ve recently been trying to come to terms with certain artists who seem to be admired by others and are even critically acclaimed, but for whatever reason don’t speak to me at all. “You’ve Got a Friend”, James Taylor(1971). And though I call it the “70s era”, it goes from 1971 to 1981. They’re the ones that popped out as particularly heinous. I call them the “most repulsive”, but really, who knows? I picked them out of a list of Casey Kasem’s end-of-year Top 40 Charts. So here are ten wimpy songs I just can’t bear. It’s all a matter of taste, I’ll acknowledge, we all have a different tipping point - my threshold of tolerance is a lot lower than a lot of other people’s. What I’m talking about is the tasteless, the cloying, the uninspired, the excessive, the shameless, and the repetitive. There were plenty of excellent singer-songwriters who could strike a sad note but retain a shred of dignity: Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, and Lord help me, even John Denver, if you go for that sort of thing.

Or for his own sorry ass which got dumped, which is fine fodder for a blues or country & western number, but less palatable when the singer sounds like the boy from Oliver! It’s not the note of blueness I deride. I am talking about the dude who is blubbering about his current girlfriend. We can all still get misty eyed over those things, I hope.

Above all its about cheap sentiment, not the good old fashioned kind about Mom, or the Boys from the Platoon Who Didn’t Make it Back, or for the One True Love of your Life Whom You Haven’t Seen Since You Were Sixteen Years Old. It’s about being excessively “pretty”, but not in a good way. It’s about not having an ounce of self-respect or pride, it’s about sniveling, grovelling, and whining. There is a distinct difference between that and being a passive, ineffectual lump of human pastry dough, a quality which knows no gender orientation. That sort of thing counts as dash and bravery, even (perhaps especially) when the singer puts it out there and makes himself vulnerable. The list is long of androgynous, make-up-wearing male creatures I include among my musical heroes. This is not about effeminacy or gender ambiguity. That’s the job of the critic to persuade and enlist the public in the important collective task of stopping horrible things.ĭon’t misconstrue my intent. Some things bug me, and I want them to stop. But for whatever reason I’ve been kicking this one around for a couple of years now. I don’t usually do listicles here I prefer trying to do some actual writing since I’m not getting paid for it and my only rewards are absolute sovereignty and self-indulgence.

Best easy listening songs 70s