30 Days of Music: Day 2

[janradder]

Least Favorite Song

Just one? Really? Hmm, that's kind of hard to narrow down. I guess if I have to, I'll pick the Carpenters' "Bless the Beasts and the Children." Perhaps more than any other group in the world, the Carpenters' have never failed in making me feel like there is no point in going on. The unexamined life is not worth living? Perhaps so, but under the influence of the Carpenter's it doesn't matter, because any type of life is not worth living. There is something so horribly depressing and morose about each and every one of their songs -- even the supposedly "happy" ones (though I must admit, I do enjoy "Superstar," if only because of the creepiness that surounds it, which Sonic Youth managed to capture perfectly in their cover of it). "Bless the Beasts and the Children," though, at least in my opinion, is the worst of these offenders. Not only does it have that dismal air about it that all Carpenters' songs strive for, it has a horrid, treacly, saccarine quality along with a cloying whininess that makes you want to scrub out your mind out with sulfuric acid in order to erase any memory of ever having heard that horrible, horrible song. I'm not recommending you do, but if you decide to take the plunge and hear for yourself, here it is in all its hideous, life-strangling glory.

Comments

[justinhowe.livejournal.com]

Dude, you have to watch this movie on netflix or youtube. It's seared into my brain and has Bill Mummy in it as a hippie kid.

All that said, I dig the Carpenters like I dig Donna Summers, Gloria Gaynor, Abba -- it was the music in the house when I was growing up, so it's all good. And she could play the drums.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I saw it years ago on cable, though I didn't realize at the time that Bill Mummy was in it. Honestly, I was kind of disappointed because I'd read the book (maybe a month or two before) and had really liked it, but I thought the movie really paled beside it. Back then, though, I hated nearly every movie that had once been a book, at least I did if I'd read the book beforehand.

There's definitely something about hearing something regularly as a kid that makes music you might normally hate not just palatable but enjoyable. I feel that way about certain disco songs and Steely Dan.