1. “Come With Me,” Puff Daddy
To actually give Senior Diddy credit for this song is ludicrous, despite Jimmy Page’s complacence. “Come With Me” simply reworks the instrumental tracks of Led Zepplin’s “Kashmir” as Puffy coughs “uh, uh-huh, yeah” repeatedly between sets of nonsensical lyrics. It was fittingly released on the horrible 1998 American remake of Godzilla, another pop culture giant that destroys all in its path.

Come With Me (feat. Jimmy Page) (live) – Puff Daddy

2. “Do the Bartman,” Bart Simpson
Around the time of The Simpsons’ second season, a huge effort was made to capitalize on the show’s popularity with all manner of merchandise – the one and only Bart leading the charge. Animated or not, and Michael Jackson notwithstanding, you don’t give a yellow suburban fourth grader a mic. Thankfully, both the show and Bart himself not only survived this onslaught of fame but flourished.

Do The Bartman – The Simpsons

3. “Roll The Bones,” Rush
Canadians are great at a lot of things. Their hockey players are legendary, their maple syrup and bacon products are far above par, and their Terrence & Philip cartoons are a delight. But our neighbors to the north ought to be steered a way from attempting to rap. Their own Rush injected a number of rhymes in 1990’s title track to Roll the Bones, with such memorable lines as “Let’s kick some gluteus max” and “The night has a thousand saxophones.”

(Say what you want, the world would be a better place if all our music videos included rapping skeletons. Yes, I know all the words to this song by heart. No, I will not apologize.)

4. “Radio Song,” R.E.M. feat. KRS-One
It’s depressing to think that the worst part of “Radio Song” is its defining element – the bellows and shouts of hip-hop legend KRS-One. A song with excellent potential that fails in its task to be everything to everyone. Indeed, the DJ sucks.

5. “Rapture,” Blondie
Kudos for Blondie for experimenting in what was largely unknown territory in 1981. Now, about this “eating cars” thing? In retrospect, Debbie Harry sounds pretty silly as she attempts to rap, but the chart-topping success of “Rapture” brought an untried art form a step closer to the masses.

In the early days of analog recording, it was important to get a good take. Tape cost money, and editing clips together could be painfully slow. As technology progressed this got easier. Now any boob can throw together a digital recording on their computer and copy/paste it to perfection.

Why, then, a modern recording would have blatant mistakes on it is beyond me. The examples on this list exist for different reasons, and I’ll do my best to deconstruct their origins.

1. “You’re Beautiful,” James Blunt

When I was in Ecuador I went on a long bus ride, and for some reason the driver had this song running on a continuous loop. Every time the beginning of this song came around, I thought it was skipping. Why did he come in early with “My life is brilliant”? And why was it left in the song? This one gets the top spot because I have no idea what they were thinking.

Weird Al parodied this mistake brilliantly in “You’re PItiful”, but Blunt denied him permission to release it, so he put it online.

2. “Head Over Feet,” Alanis Morissette

Setting aside that the expression is “head over heels,” not feet, one could still make the case that this whole song is a mistake. The big gaff comes when Alanis does something she should probably never do – she plays the harmonica.

A quick lesson on harmonicas: they come in two flavors, diatonic and chromatic. The diatonic ones only play the notes in a certain key, so anyone can blow in and out to their heart’s content and it will sound great … as long as the chords stay in the key.

Unfortunately for Alanis, the chords of her song move away from the key and her harmonica solo sounds more and more like it’s being played by a toddler. Maybe she surrounds herself with sycophantic yes men, but a good producer would have put a stop on this train wreck.

3. “Believe,” Cher

This one may not actually contain a mistake, but I’m including it anyway because this is the first song I remember hearing that had that digital voice sound. “That digital voice sound” is actually a computerized auto-tuner; a plugin that corrects singers’ pitches. You can adjust the settings to tell it how long a note needs to stay off pitch before it is corrected, or how gradual the correction should be. If you go too far with some of the settings, it makes that digital sound.

My guess is that the engineers were fixing Cher’s singing in the studio, overdid it with the settings, and decided it sounded kind of cool.

4. “Vertigo,” U2

“Uno … dos … tres … catorce!” Catorce? 1,2,3, 14? I don’t think any of the lyrics to this song make any sense, but the opening line is baffling. In fairness, it does adhere to Bono’s law: Everything Bono does is correct.

5. “Steven’s Last Night in Town,” Ben Folds Five

For the record, I am a big fan of mistakes. As a jazz musician, most of what I do revolves around spontaneity and serendipity. I believe that an imperfect performance is more human and often more emotional than one executed with clinical perfection. The album Whatever and Ever Amen was recorded in Ben’s house, and is riddled with imperfections that only seem to add to its genius. My favorite happy accident is in “Steven’s Last Night in Town.” At 2:54 when the band breaks, you can hear the phone ring. It sounds like it belongs, which is the mark of a really good mistake.

Top 5 mistakes

To paraphrase the musical “Avenue Q,” the more you love someone, the more you want to kill them. The same can be said of art – specifically music. When you’re passionate about something this complex and varied, you discover that every bit of elation is offset by a degree of frustration. Hey, it’s all part of the same ball of wax, so we’re dedicating this week to all the frustrations, annoyances and venom that helps fertilize our love for music.

One of the traps inherent in popular music is its reliance on simple formulas (usually 4/4 time and, if it’s rock, probably in E or E minor – invariably tuned down a half step if you’re in Guns ‘n Roses) that allows listeners to walk an emotional tightrope offset by a 1-5-4 safety net. For better or for worse, an audience is more likely to feel safer experiencing heroin addiction through the same three or four chords the Rolling Stones’ “Dead Roses” than with “Charlie Parker on Dial Volume 1.”

But even a good artist can wear out the welcome mat and with it, the listener’s patience. And ‘lo the ’90s! The grand era when a producer could rest his Jack Daniels on the sampler’s “repeat” button for four minutes and call it a day! What a better way to kick off Hate Week at theFiver than with the:

1. “Baby, Baby,” Amy Grant (1991)
This infinitely peppy hit that signaled Grant’s crossover from gospel to mainstream pop in the early ’90s was inspired by Grant’s then-newborn daughter. It’s also responsible for the suicides of countless studio and touring keyboardists, thanks to its never-ending riff.

2. “Two Princes,” Spin Doctors (1992)
I’ll say it – yeah, I liked the Spin Doctors. Still do. Wanna make somethin’ of it? Think your post-Grateful Dead pot smokin’ hippie band’s better than mine? Well, pass that joint and we’ll settle this over a game of hacky-sack. Still, I’m a bit bummed that better songs such as “Cleopatara’s Cat,” and “How Could You Want Him (When You Know You Could Have Me)” are overshadowed by the mind-numbing effects of “Two Princes.”

3. “The Rockafella Skank,” Fatboy Slim (1998)
Ever wonder what would happen if you took a sleep-deprived British DJ loaded on X and Jägerbombs and gave him his own copy of Pro Tools? Norman Cook, aka, Fatboy Slim, doesn’t need to guess.

4. “Bittersweet Symphony,” The Verve (1997)
This song has gone through a myriad of legal twist and turns as its main riff is an endless sampling of the Andrew Oldham Orchestra recording of the Rolling Stones’ 1965 song “The Last Time.” This is an example of how music truly belongs to the listener, to the people. For art forever resides in the human heart and spirit – its true home – not in the ledgers and records of music company executives.

OK, you can stop laughing.

The Stones were eventually able to snag the song’s royalties, and the song has since been featured in advertisements for sneakers and cars, enabling Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to once again wipe their wrinkled behinds with hundred dollar bills. On a personal note, I’d like to say that both of my copies of “Bittersweet Symphony” came as gifts in the form of two separate mix CDs I got from two different friends on the same day, so I’ve never paid for the song. So, to Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards, take note: IOU 1 back rub.

5. “Hero,” Mariah Carey (1993)
Why do I pick on Mariah so much? I’ll tell you why: MTV’s Cribs. Watch her tour of her penthouse and you’ll understand how far down our seething jealously goes. And also, in spite of her formidable vocal range, she’s not very good. Case in point, “Hero,” an awful, cloying and terribly repetitive ballad with a rhyming scheme and melody that would make one tear away the cochlear implants of the deaf if only to spare them any chance of having to hear this song. Congratulations, Mariah, why don’t you come on stage and – Kanye, NO!

“Yo, I’m gonna let you finish, but first I gotta say that Lenny Kravitz had the most repetitive songs of any artist in the ’90s!”

Wow, uh, actually, Kanye, you’ve got a good point. Perhaps no other artist of the 1990s better exemplified regurgating the same damn chords throughout a song with barely a change throughout. Thanks, for pointing that out, Kanye.

“You’re damn skippy.”

Indeed. I am, in fact, damn skippy.

Kayne’s Choice Award for Most Repetitive Artist of the 1990s: Lenny Kravitz.

From 1993’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way” to his cover of “American Woman” in 1999, Kravitz proved that you can, in fact, be born of a celebrity and still release endlessly repetitve music under the guise of being retro. There is no better example than his ultimate lather-rinse-repeat monstrosity “Fly Away” (1998). Good on ya, Lenny. Your little gold statue is in the mail.

Vote No on 1 | Protect Maine Equality
RepeatrepeatRepeatrepeatRepeatrepeat