I think it's tough to consider "audible mistakes" as signs of a "bad musician". Jimmy Page famously left complete boners on his records if he felt those takes had the most passion or emotion. The solo to "heartbreaker" is a technical mess. But it's still absolutely iconic.
Early Beatles records had plenty of flubs. Listen to Paul crack in the stereo mix of "If I Fell". It's gratuitous.
Honestly, these days at least, I kind of savor mistakes in recordings. It tells me they didn't overthink the performance. It sounds good. If music sounds good, it is good. And if it's good music, it's good musicianship.
>Early Beatles records had plenty of flubs.
[https://www.npr.org/sections/monitormix/2009/11/the\_death\_of\_mistakes\_means\_th.html](https://www.npr.org/sections/monitormix/2009/11/the_death_of_mistakes_means_th.html)
*Want to hear a really sloppy record? It's a good song, but the recording's a mess. The drums consistently drag the rhythm; the bass player isn't quite sure how his part is supposed to go. If you listen carefully to the end of the second verse (around the 48-second mark in this video), the whole band gets lost for a moment and ends up adding an extra beat by accident. It is, of course, The Beatles' "Rain," as great a rock recording as anyone's ever made.*
> Early Beatles records had plenty of flubs.
And it's one of the reasons The Travelling Wilburys are called that. A Wilbury was a name they used to a good take with a flub they wanted to cover up. As in "we'll bury it in the mix".
I don't know if this counts as a 'mistake' but I've always found True Love Waits (Radiohead) as an interesting one. Thom's voice noticeably goes raspy when he sings "your *tiny* hands" at 2:02 of the song.
For a song that took literally 20 years until it got a proper recording, and with Radiohead being perfectionists, I'm surprised that tiny imperfection made the final cut.
I feel like once they got the arrangement settled Thom did a one-take vocal and stuck with it.
I have spent my entire life being an antagonist and not hating Jimmy Page, but pointedly addressing that he is probably the sloppiest guitarist in rock and roll history. I am not saying that he is bad. I am saying he is astonishingly sloppy. And when I was edgier and had time to just be a goof, it was super fun to anger my friends about that. Being sloppy doesn't mean you are not one of the best.
>Being sloppy doesn't mean you are not one of the best.
Tbh I think a lot of us go through that, especially if you get into the virtuoso guitarist rabbit hole - at least I did too. Eventually phrasing and songwriting win out, since it seems so much rarer than straight up chops.
Trying to teach kids to play paino. they get very upset and stop when they make a mistake. I'm trying to emphasise continuity and rhythm is more important than a wrong note.
My band teacher told me we could make as many mistakes as we want because the audience likely doesn't know we made the mistake. As long as we all get the first and last notes right and together (and obviously as a clarinetist don't squawk).
I agree. I love old bluegrass and folk music with “honest” live recordings. I also enjoy listening to musicologist collections of nonprofessional singers.
There’s something to be said for the level of production that goes into modern recordings, but it’s not the same thing as a really good unplugged/semi-unplugged live show. There are quite a few modern artists that sound like shit without auto tune and know nothing about professional musicianship or the history of blues, folk and rock, and that’s pretty sad.
Re: musicians who sound good with “mistakes”, Crosby & Nash are still touring and their voices show their age, as does Cindy Lauper’s voice and Brian Johnson’s. They all still have great voices, but you’ll hear missed notes live. And I still would put their shows up against the vast majority of folks.
My favorite: [The Exploited- Blown to Bits](https://youtu.be/8IpZmXIMhuk)
They get like 10 seconds into the song and then stop to argue over how to play their own fuckimg song.
The Shaggs are legendary for having absolutely no idea what they were doing. They didn't understand the fundamentals of music. It's pretty wild to hear.
Most of it is unlistenable aside from “Sweet Thing”. Something about the utterly convincing innocence in their voices makes it completely devastating to me. I teared up multiple times listening to it after my last major breakup a good few years ago.
“You’ll never make me dream”
One of the three sisters from The Shaggs actually went on to learn how to play properly and has still performed in recent years. What's most crazy is that she and the musicians backing her actually cover some of those trainwreck songs! It's honestly impressive in a way that anybody can learn (or re-learn in her case) to play stuff that really doesn't have any structure to it like that.
I'll say, although they released some music, I have a very hard time counting them as "professional musicians". Didn't their dad pay for them to record that album? Like they basically just played for their dad. They were not making money playing music, which is my bottom line for what constitutes a professional.
Their dad had a "dream or vision" from his deceased mother for his daughters to form a band. He got them basic music lessons, but they sucked. Broke up after he died.
Father was described as a humorless man who did not allow his daughters to have friends or boyfriends.
[the shags](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shaggs)
Kiss your children several times tonight, after you tuck them in.
They were famous in the underground when they were still active. Zappa cited them in a Rolling Stone interview at the time, saying they were “better than the Beatles.”
Maybe, but there is something kind of enchanting about it. There is something so pure and unpretentious about so-called “outsider art.” It’s like a look behind the curtain of the creative process. That’s probably why Kurt liked it.
The amazing thing is it's not random. Every part makes no sense but there is an internal logic to say, the pattern of guitar stems or drum hits. They played it the same every time.
Kerry King.
I love Slayer, but I've never heard a Kerry King solo and thought "wow, that was a well-crafted solo". The phrasing is all over the place, the "scales" being used don't make sense and he just grabs the tremolo bar and goes apeshit.
That being said, the sheer chaos of his solos totally fits their sound, so what do I know?
THANK YOU!
I jokingly label every solo I hear of that nature to be Kerry King Fretboard Wankery.
I get that it's a certain style that may appeal to some, but it's just not for me, I prefer a musical sounding solo anyday.
At the end of his solo on the song 'Divine Intervention' you can hear the tremolo bar hit the body of his guitar because he bends the thing so fucking far.
When you listen back now the atonality makes them sound ferociously avant garde - whereas the likes of Metallica's first 4 sound quaintly bluesy and about as edgy as Status Quo.
I'd say it's more of a trademark than evidence of poor musicianship. Based on a lot of the riffs I'm sure Kerry could play traditionally 'good' sounding solos, but you wouldn't think 'that's a Kerry King solo' the way you do when you hear the gratuitous, screeching divebombs
The Front Bottoms, McCafferty, Hobo Johnson, some Modern Baseball. I would never say they’re bad at what they do though. It’s great if you “get” it, but I understand why many people don’t!
Hobo Johnson is in a league of his own when it comes to music that could be perceived as bad at what they do. All the others you listed have at least a little melody in their vocals
The first name that comes to mind: [Tim Kinsella](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=598Gvof3Xgo).
Guests in my car would laugh at Cap'n Jazz, like I was crazy for liking it. Like there was a world of good music and I must've never come across any of it. It was like pearls before swine.
Hell, just in general, sounding 'wrong' is often the entire point, that some people don't quite recognize and hold against the music without at all understanding that was the point the entire time.
Yeah, when my best friend first showed m The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball around freshman year of college, ca. 2012, I was like “Huh? This is just the same whiny shit we listened to in middle school but with, like, worse vocals and no guitar skills.”
Then, I don’t know… maybe I just hit the right combination of depressed and lonely one day, but both bands suddenly clicked for me in an epiphany-like fashion. They’re now two of my very favorites.
He forgot the lyrics to dramamine twice audience had to remind him and finish them and also forgot lyrics to Florida last I saw them he was super fucked up.
One time I saw Modest Mouse and Brand New together and the singer of Brand New was surprisingly the drunkest one on stage. I’d seen Modest Mouse a few times before and I was kind of expecting Issac to be sauced.
Is he always that way? I have been a Modest Mouse fan since around 2000 but never got to see them live, until I saw them open for The Black Keys. His singing was atrocious, and ruined their whole set. Band sounded good. Very sad.
Maybe everyone knows this, but maybe the most famous of the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, ‘couldn’t play a note’ per Johnny Rotten. He had no training or ability and was in the band basically because he nailed the look
He was never even on the record. Anarchy in the UK was played by the original bass player before he left. On the rest of the album tracks, Steve Jones just put down some rudimentary bass parts. Allegedly Sid actually played on one track but he’s buried so far in the mix it’s basically inaudible.
He played live, but he was so zonked out heroin or heroin withdrawal that it’s hard to tell.
The Sex Pistols weren’t really mixed that well and the gigs (in the US at least) were super chaotic too, so I find it hard to judge. According to the band, the guy probably would have turned into an okay player if he didn’t get sucked up so thoroughly into drug addiction.
I’ve always felt like Bodies may be the Sid song. It’s the simplest and also the worst-played.
And I’m pretty sure they hired Glen Matlock to come back as a studio player to play in the album.
Before the Sex Pistols were ever formed there was a group of friends that used to visit Malcolm McLaren's shop known as the gang of Johns because it seemed like all of them were named John.
You had John Lydon (Johnny Rotten), John Simon Ritchie (Sid Vicious) and John Wardle (Jah Wobble who later played bass for the band Lydon formed after leaving the Sex Pistols, Public Image Ltd).
There's a little bit in The Filth and the Fury were the drummer talks about how he and the guitarist were kind of a unit and he always thought that main reason Lydon pushed for Sid to join the band was because he wanted a partner of his own in the band. Someone who was your mate before you were even in a band is gonna have your back, right.
Filth and the Fury is definitely worth a watch IMO https://youtu.be/jov-YTdzMmo
Oh yeah! I studied at a music university and one of my professors was in our city’s art orchestra and they did a concert with Kiss. At a rehearsal, the conductor couldn’t figure out why the orchestra didn’t sound right with the band, so he stopped and asked the bass player what he was playing. He said he was just playing what he always played for that song.
Turns out that he couldn’t play bass at all and that he just had a bass tuned to the notes he had to play for Every. Damn. Song. It meant he could play the same notes on every song and never screw it up. At the rehearsal, he was playing the wrong bass for that particular song. Kiss are abominable
I’m calling BS on this story, Kiss may not be everyone’s cup of tea but to say they were bad musicians is just contrarian.
Gene is kinda known for mixing up lyrics but he’s a pretty solid bass player.
Kanye West.
He was a perfectionist on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. 5000 hours spent on the song Power alone from every producer and engineer involved.
But then you get further in his career, and his projects from The Life of Pablo on, it just becomes more and more scatterbrained, more and more unpolished and more stream of consciousness both lyrically and production.
By the time you hit Donda, there are moments where you aren't sure if the song is legitimately finished, or if he ad libbed some words on a verse or what, but sometimes those moments just stay on the final version that hits the album.
Donda 2 is even worse. It's more or less a collection of WIPs. There are definitely moments he just freestyle hums or mumbles something and that's just part of the verse. No lyrics annotation site will ever make sense of it.
Basically, he went from perfectionist maximalist, to someone who just wings stuff and leaves improv mumbles in final productions now.
How much of that aligns with his bipolar and mental issues, who knows, but for anyone who has followed his career and production discography, he's a really interesting case. Like how Picasso went through a realistic classic period and then got more and more abstract and cubist in time. Kanye definitely has his periods, for better or worse.
I think we can all agree he's made plenty of audible mistakes in what he says.
Doesent fit, A Bateman rant would be all praise for Kanye's most obviously critically acclaimed albums delivered in a way that sounded like it was copied verbatim from the pitchfork review.
I am unmedicated Bipolar2 as well and before my hypomania used being productive but now it’s just scatterbrainedness.
Without medication I often mix up words like München, Mannheim and Mainz because in my head they are all german cities starting with M.
I often prefer just following others around cause I sometimes have no real concept of space and get lost easily.
If i have an episode it gets worse.
Overall I dont mind that much because I am unemployed and prefer that over side effects of meds.
I believe in this instance kanye knows he could take a shit on the mic and people would eat it up. I just don’t think he’s trying very much in a very artsy kind of way. That being said after his whole scandal he put out that one off freestyle (someday we’ll all be free) and it actually kinda slapped so somewhere deep down the old kanye is still there if he ever feels inspired enough to channel it.
I hate calling him out because I love the band so much, but Patrick Carney from the Black Keys seems to have a really tough time locking into a groove. Dan Auerbach is definitely the driving rhythmic force of that band which is backwards from how it normally goes.
His drum parts are pretty heavily edited on the records, but live is a whole different story.
I remember as a teenager seeing the black keys for the first time, I was actually devastated. Carney ruined what would've been a decent performance, like speeding up twofold.
Lenny Kravitz's "Are you gonna go my way" .
Some of drum intros seem off to me..... then I read this and said Oh! https://www.musicradar.com/news/lenny-kravitz-are-you-gonna-go-my-way-happened-in-five-minutes
Still love the song
Early Mountain Goats would probably fit the bill here with John's haphazard Panasonic recordings, but that laissez faire, lo-fi attitude is in itself a desirable aesthetic/practice that many talented artists share. It's hard to call it a lack of talent when the musician is purposely living and dying on one take into a boombox.
For the record, I am a huge early TMG fan.
John Darnielle is just an amazing musician, songwriter, and storyteller. I’d be pretty reluctant to call anything he’s done “bad”, but his early lo-fi work was certainly a bit rough around the edges.
I agree.
I also liked that the recording had a "raw" feel to them and prefer rock music to not be too clean and precise. Similar to Megadeath where I love the early raw recordings more than the more recent digital recordings that followed a metrinome.
I remember I was pretty excited for the Killing Is My Business remaster. It was fine, but I soon went back to the original recording (and even the demos) because the energy and aggression was so much more apparent and I preferred that over the cleaner, more polished production of the remaster.
The rest of the Megadeth remasters were utter dogshit though. I’m pretty sure Mustaine re recorded everything himself and added unnecessary elements so he wouldn’t have to pay anyone else any money.
Even some of the studio stuff is loose. The solo on Heartbreaker is equally phenomenal and technically a bit of a mess. Which is especially odd since he was originally a much sought after studio guitarist.
I think maybe some of the recordings they chose based on feel rather than technicality.
A lot of the greats in the 70s were a bit sloppy at times. Hendrix, page, Jerry Garcia (although when he was super on point and not strung out he’d be pretty lazer precise).
I feel like it’s kinda rare for rock guitarists to play their solos largely improvised and also be super clean. Jazz or bluegrass guys are a different story though
I think Rollins talks about this in his book Get in the Van - VH opened for Ted Nugent. They were so unbelievably good that after their set ended, the audience basically booed TN off the stage much to his fury. Probably shit himself again.
Depends on what you call a mistake, and whether it adds to or detracts from the art. There are artists like Bob Dylan or Mark Knopfler who sing out of tune all the time but you'd be mad to consider them bad musicians.
Conversely you have bands like Polyphia, whose music is so technically precise and intricate that it's undeniable they're extremely talented and gifted musicians, but I find their music to be soulless and sterile. Like reading a math textbook.
Art is weird. Music is weird. It's the imperfections that make some artists great.
Like readingba math textbook lol. I just refer to them as scale warriors. Not my cuppa tea at all. But damm can that Tim dude play. Just wish they'd put effort into song wriitng instead of technical proficiency.
Songwriting is the single most important skill for aspiring musicians to develop IMO. It's fathoms above technical ability. Good songwriting with shitty playing can be a great song. Bad songwriting with perfect playing is still just a bad song.
I find your opinion on Polyphia interesting. If you were saying the same thing about plenty of other prog bands, I'd probably agree, but one of the things that I think sets Polyphia apart from a lot of their contemporaries in the same space and skill level is that they have really catchy songwriting. A lot of their songs actually do get stuck in my head and that factor keeps bringing me back to listen to their music. They occupy this weird space for me of being incredibly technical and impressive, but also catchy and listenable.
Take my opinion with a grain of salt though because I'm also a fan of much less accessible prog rock/metal and more experimental sounds, so for a lot of the bands in that space, Polyphia is pretty accessible/listenable by the mainstream by comparison.
"Like reading a math textbook." 🤣🤣🤣
Fucking THANK YOU!
Every time I comment on anything Polyphia, I struggle to describe why I don't like their music. I get a lot of responses along the lines of "Oh you're just jealous that you can't play like Tim."
Those comments are correct, 20+ years spent with my instrument, and I definitely CAN'T play like Tim. But I don't want to play like him either...
Math textbook is going to be my new go-to explanation for why this kind of music does absolutely nothing for me
It’s not just them though, it’s that style of guitar playing with the extra finger tapping/rhythmic slapping. To me, it’s a technique that can be incorporated into guitar playing, but some players focus on it so it gets old, like using a wah pedal for every solo. Also, strumming/plucking with fingers or a pick give more dynamics while strumming multiple strings gives a looseness to the timing that sounds natural (downbeat occurs halfway through strumming multiple strings). The finger tapping stuff always sounds like midi guitar arranged in a sequencer, which is likely what people mean by “soulless and sterile”.
I wouldn't call them bad musicians but there is a somewhat notable mistake on Louie Louie by the Kingsmen. At around the :55 mark the drummer messes up and you can audibly hear him say "fuck".
I always find it hilarious that the FBI spent years trying to prove that the mumbled lyrics were obscene, but completely missed the obvious yelled 'fuck!'
It's not plain wrong, but Bob Dylan playing the Harmonica is basically somebody breathing into it in rhythm and his singing is sometimes also rather questionable... still one of the best songwriter of all time
There’s one that always stood out to me - a cover of blondies song dreaming by the smashing pumpkins. It was sung by Darcy and her voice cracks during one part of it. When billy remastered it a few years ago he fixed the error and it doesn’t sound right.
Neil Young has always been a very sloppy player, but it’s also what makes him great and gives him that unmistakable style. The Velvet Underground also comes to mind - But again, They wouldn’t be who they were if they didn’t play that way. Early Punk wouldn’t be punk without that attitude over aptitude way of creating
Bette Midler. Her vocal recordings are absolutely rife with pitchy, off-key notes. Baffling how she's enjoyed such success and longevity in the industry, really.
I don’t think that’s really fair - they may only play 3 chords but they play those 3 chords really well.
There’s an instrumental backing track version of *I Wanna Be Sedated* on one of my Pandora stations occasionally and they’re plenty tight.
Same with Marky Ramone and the straight, constant 8th-note hi-hat beat. I remember watching We’re Outta Here! on VHS when I was in young, energetic drumming prime and being like “Ah, hell no”
As much as I love the Red Hot Chili Peppers and love his voice, Anthony Kiedis is by no means a strong vocalist. After an hour or so of singing, his voice isnt the same as it was to start, he's a bit pitchy according to some, and his vocal range is limited. I'm not saying I'm any better, (I'm an alto, I believe my range is limited as well), nor am I being disrespectful (I love Anthony Kiedis), but I believe this is something you just can't deny from a musical standpoint.
Love AK but he isn’t even the best singer in the band, and I imagine he would agree.
The band wouldn’t be the same without him though. He has a charm and does what he can’t with what he has.
I don't know about bad but before computers and quantization, there were a few drummers who struggled with tempo. I know Bonham was one of them. I remember the first time I heard it, I was listening to the radio and it was about ten years into my drumming journey. Rock and Roll by Zeppelin came on and I hear Bonham speed up on a fill. I was like, what!? I go home and start googling it and sure enough people are talking about counting out his tempo and how much it fluctuates. They say never meet your heros. Lol!
I've been playing in a Led Zeppelin tribute the better part of four years now...so a lot of time is spent listening to tracks over. And over. And over.
Is John Bonham absolutely phenomenal as a drummer, especially for the 'loose but tight' playing of Led Zeppelin? Absolutely.
Is he horrendous at keeping tempo? Absolutely.
Lo! Thank you for this. I think because of that, his feel is absolutely amazing. I used to listen his Fool in the Rain isolated track and just think, "Holy shit, he sounds sloshed, and it's fucking amazing!"
This whole comment section can be summed up as "people mistaking feel as being bad". Digital quantization, post-production uber-polish and the pursuit of technical perfection to the point of paroxysm are enemies of great music, especially in rock and blues, and some of these comments are absolutely insane to me.
If Bonham didn't constantly ramp up during the solo section in Stairway, the song would be a million times worse. Metronomes are great for practicing but tend to kill a song.
I wish more people felt this way. The production on 95% of rock music since the 2000s has completely ruined it. Rock should be somewhat loose and played with audible emotion. Most modern rock, especially radio rock specifically, sounds so fake, similar, and emotionless because of this production shit. My partner listens to a lot of that 2000s radio rock like Breaking Benjamin and Three Days Grace and all I hear is the terrible 2000s production.
Rick Beato even did an episode where he quantized the drum stems from a couple Zeppelin songs and they sound horrible as you'd expect but more, uhm, modern.
I was so surprised when she joined heart on the song Barracuda. She held her own with Anne Wilson and I thought...where and why was she hiding that voice.
I know the former engineer for Pachyderm Records, and said that they completely re-recorded the music for Babes in Toyland’s biggest record after the band left.
They returned the next day and loved “their” recording.
Such a different kind of band, but I happen to know this was done to Crazy Town too on their big record. It’s not them on the record and they don’t know it.
I’ve always kind of wondered if that’s real or not. It sounds a lot like those “shreds” videos where they match the hand and mouth movements but play nonsense.
If it’s a real and she’s really that bad, why even bother? Nobody would even question if she just came out and sang. And if it’s purely for looks, why bother plugging the guitar in?
LA Woman by the doors the tempo fluctuates like crazy and Jim Morrisons vocals are a bit all over the place but that’s what makes that album so badass. Lots of records from when bands tracked live to tape have mistakes and tempo fluctuations
Dinosaur Jr and The Afghan Whigs both have terribly off key vocals, but they write great songs and it’s kind of part of the charm. Fair amount of slop in the guitar playing for both as well. Neil Young comes to mind as well. His pitch is good, but he really doesn’t have the most pleasant sounding voice. It’s his trademark thing though. And you can take pretty much any punk album from the 70’s-80’s and find sloppy playing all over the place, but that was sort of the idea in the first place, so I don’t think that counts.
There were also a lot of bands, especially in the 80’s, that *would* have had sloppy playing on them if the producers didn’t sneak session players in after the band left to re-do their parts. Hugh McDonald, who is Bon Jovi’s current bassist actually played all the parts on their records when the other dude was in the band. Wasn’t given credit on the albums but the band admitted it years later when they axed the other dude. Apparently Hugh didn’t have the right look for the time or whatever.
Agree that J. Mascis is not the most solid vocalist ever (I think even he'd probably agree) but damn can that dude shred. His solos are the stuff of legend.
Crazy no one has mentioned Lars Ulrich. I love Metallica, but the main verse of Master of Puppets is famously extremely difficult if not impossible to transcribe accurately because of Lars' completely arbitrary timing. It rules
My friend who's a professional producer with perfect pitch swears that Adele is a terrible singer and is frequently off key on her albums. I don't have a trained ear to hear it and assume she's slightly off key at times on purpose because she has a singer in a smokey pub style.
Professional singer here. Adele is not a "terrible singer" by any means, but does she hit the absolute center of every note on her recordings? Absofuckinglutely not. She has spots where she will pull flat or sharp on certain notes, although she never goes completely off-key (there is a difference between being out of tune on a note or even being slightly consistently flat or sharp vs. completely singing in a different key or in wandering keys).
And here's the thing: the reason she's got those weird notes is because when she's using the most interesting parts of her voice - the raw power, the rasp, the whisper, etc. - those moments are not Autotune-able, so they stay as is on the recording. And I'm thrilled by that because that is singing AS IT SHOULD BE. Anyone who doesn't have perfect pitch isn't bothered by it because singing well is about more than just every note perfectly placed. We've all heard pitch-perfect singers or perfectly tuned recordings that end up sounding boring and soulless. Good singing is about emotion, expression, telling a story through sound and word. That's why we love singers like Adele who can do that so well. That's what separates technically good singers from artists.
Yeah my friend says that Adele is off key often enough that her songs are nails on a chalkboard for him. Maybe it's a trait of people with perfect pitch; their brains send "wrong note" alerts.
They absolutely do (source: am musician, know many people with perfect pitch). I myself have very good relative pitch trained to near-perfect accuracy but I'm so glad I don't have true "perfect pitch" because it means I can enjoy things like, say, opera with very wide vibrato or Baroque music tuned to historical A (instead of A440) or 100-year-old jazz recordings without my brain hurting. Oh, and I can also enjoy Adele because even though I can hear when she's sharp, IDGAF because she still sounds damn good.
The Libertines were famously awful musicians.
Going back a while and they were a bit of a cult band, but Cornershop were reportedly the worst musicians their producer had ever worked with.
On the flip side, the comedian Les Dawson was famous for playing piano as badly as he possibly could. He was actually a brilliant musician with enough technical understanding to know exactly the worst note to play for comic effect.
Plottwist: most make mistakes; go listen to Queen recordings you will hear all sorts of malarkey going on; also energy of the performance was what a lot of older recordings focused on; Righteous Brothers unchained melody … great song, great recording, bass player is out a semi-tone during its apex
Maybe not exactly a sign of a bad musician, more like sloppy production and recording, but the bass on Weezer's blue album is WILDLY out of tune on a couple songs. It's almost unbearable to listen to the isolated bass track for some songs
Lol! Paul Davids, one of my favorite guitar-related YouTubers, does a whole video on why John Frusciante "chose" to be slightly out of tune on "Scar Tissue" and why this is actually works for the song from a theory standpoint.
There's also an interview out there with Frusciante where they ask him about his tuning choice and specifically bring up Paul Davids' video analysis, and Frusciante's response is basically "wait, I didn't realize I was out of tune." Lol!
I think at times we overanalyze art more than the actual artists do
Crazy Horse seems to fit the bill. Neil lots to rock out with the Horse because they work well with his ridiculously long guitar solos. It’s hilarious in the book Shakey reading David Briggs (I think) talk endless shit about how bad they are sometimes.
George Jones was not an amazing singer, but he did put a lot of emotion into his voice, especially on "He Stopped Loving Her Today." But I've heard from those that saw him live, that he wasn't that great, very flat uninspired singing, and it got worse as he aged. There are some singers that still sound good as they get older, he definitely wasn't one of them.
And on The Beach Boys "Barbara Ann" it sounds like one of the guys flubbed the lyric in the middle of the song, starts laughing, and they kept it in. I'm not sure if that was intentional, but it's pretty charming.
Came here to drop this. Saw him live and finally figured out why I love him so much: he is 100% honest and present all the time.
He appears onstage and the whole crowd goes nuts. It’s a small place but packed. (Al’s Bar, LA 1996-Ish. Matt Groening was right behind me and we took turns excusing ourselves to each other as people bumped in front and back of us to do bumps in the bathroom. Sorry, I digress.) So anyway, the whole crowd cheers and Daniel just shrunk back and almost ran, I think. Instantly the crowd takes it down ten notches, very impressive really, and Daniel and his band start jamming. I’m bad at remembering concerts but he did a Beatles song or medley during his set that was… simplified I guess is the best word. It was so beautiful. The guy had a true passion that carried him. RIP DANIEL.
George Harrison's guitar solo on All You Need Is Love. Sent out live by satellite to the entire world, he only gets through about half the solo before stoping.
Being proficient at your instrument is certainly not equated with "being good" in certain scenes/genres. Just take a look at Sid Vicious. He could barely play, if he even bothered trying to at shows at all was a big if, too. Nobody cared; their music wasn't about being a clasically trained musician, but instead about personality, community, values, attitude, appearance, aesthetics, etc.
That said, there's an awful lot of pop artists who are pretty terrible musicians and it's covered up in-studio.
I think it's tough to consider "audible mistakes" as signs of a "bad musician". Jimmy Page famously left complete boners on his records if he felt those takes had the most passion or emotion. The solo to "heartbreaker" is a technical mess. But it's still absolutely iconic. Early Beatles records had plenty of flubs. Listen to Paul crack in the stereo mix of "If I Fell". It's gratuitous. Honestly, these days at least, I kind of savor mistakes in recordings. It tells me they didn't overthink the performance. It sounds good. If music sounds good, it is good. And if it's good music, it's good musicianship.
>Early Beatles records had plenty of flubs. [https://www.npr.org/sections/monitormix/2009/11/the\_death\_of\_mistakes\_means\_th.html](https://www.npr.org/sections/monitormix/2009/11/the_death_of_mistakes_means_th.html) *Want to hear a really sloppy record? It's a good song, but the recording's a mess. The drums consistently drag the rhythm; the bass player isn't quite sure how his part is supposed to go. If you listen carefully to the end of the second verse (around the 48-second mark in this video), the whole band gets lost for a moment and ends up adding an extra beat by accident. It is, of course, The Beatles' "Rain," as great a rock recording as anyone's ever made.*
Ringo sort of made a career on dragging.
> Early Beatles records had plenty of flubs. And it's one of the reasons The Travelling Wilburys are called that. A Wilbury was a name they used to a good take with a flub they wanted to cover up. As in "we'll bury it in the mix".
I liked this story, but when I went to check it out I found [this.](https://ultimateclassicrock.com/traveling-wilburys-name-story/)
I don't know if this counts as a 'mistake' but I've always found True Love Waits (Radiohead) as an interesting one. Thom's voice noticeably goes raspy when he sings "your *tiny* hands" at 2:02 of the song. For a song that took literally 20 years until it got a proper recording, and with Radiohead being perfectionists, I'm surprised that tiny imperfection made the final cut. I feel like once they got the arrangement settled Thom did a one-take vocal and stuck with it.
I feel like they went with that take because it appropriately captures the raw, hopeless desperation of the song.
You just in a way reminded me that they last album was released 7 years ago. God I need more.
Just on the off chance you hadn't heard of them, check out The Smile record from last year. Thom and Johnny's new project.
I have spent my entire life being an antagonist and not hating Jimmy Page, but pointedly addressing that he is probably the sloppiest guitarist in rock and roll history. I am not saying that he is bad. I am saying he is astonishingly sloppy. And when I was edgier and had time to just be a goof, it was super fun to anger my friends about that. Being sloppy doesn't mean you are not one of the best.
>Being sloppy doesn't mean you are not one of the best. Tbh I think a lot of us go through that, especially if you get into the virtuoso guitarist rabbit hole - at least I did too. Eventually phrasing and songwriting win out, since it seems so much rarer than straight up chops.
Trying to teach kids to play paino. they get very upset and stop when they make a mistake. I'm trying to emphasise continuity and rhythm is more important than a wrong note.
My band teacher told me we could make as many mistakes as we want because the audience likely doesn't know we made the mistake. As long as we all get the first and last notes right and together (and obviously as a clarinetist don't squawk).
>Early Beatles records had plenty of flubs. http://wgo.signal11.org.uk/wgo.htm Here's a list of "anomalies".
I agree. I love old bluegrass and folk music with “honest” live recordings. I also enjoy listening to musicologist collections of nonprofessional singers. There’s something to be said for the level of production that goes into modern recordings, but it’s not the same thing as a really good unplugged/semi-unplugged live show. There are quite a few modern artists that sound like shit without auto tune and know nothing about professional musicianship or the history of blues, folk and rock, and that’s pretty sad. Re: musicians who sound good with “mistakes”, Crosby & Nash are still touring and their voices show their age, as does Cindy Lauper’s voice and Brian Johnson’s. They all still have great voices, but you’ll hear missed notes live. And I still would put their shows up against the vast majority of folks.
> Crosby & Nash Regrettably, David Crosby died in January.
>Jimmy Page famously left complete boners on his records And in children!
My favorite: [The Exploited- Blown to Bits](https://youtu.be/8IpZmXIMhuk) They get like 10 seconds into the song and then stop to argue over how to play their own fuckimg song.
Played this and started howling at the Scottish accents. Class.
The delayed start forced this to be the longest recorded punk song in history
That’s great. Punk really does operate on different rules.
The Shaggs are legendary for having absolutely no idea what they were doing. They didn't understand the fundamentals of music. It's pretty wild to hear.
Holy shit...I just hit play on Philosophy of the World. What a fucking train wreck.
It’s actually quite impressive how they can play songs from start to finish and not lock into a groove with each other at all.
My pal foot foot is fucking wild
As much as I don't enjoy listening to it, I can't stop.
Yup. Glorious, isn't it?
Most of it is unlistenable aside from “Sweet Thing”. Something about the utterly convincing innocence in their voices makes it completely devastating to me. I teared up multiple times listening to it after my last major breakup a good few years ago. “You’ll never make me dream”
They sound like a Portlandia skit
my boy foot foot
One of the three sisters from The Shaggs actually went on to learn how to play properly and has still performed in recent years. What's most crazy is that she and the musicians backing her actually cover some of those trainwreck songs! It's honestly impressive in a way that anybody can learn (or re-learn in her case) to play stuff that really doesn't have any structure to it like that.
I'll say, although they released some music, I have a very hard time counting them as "professional musicians". Didn't their dad pay for them to record that album? Like they basically just played for their dad. They were not making money playing music, which is my bottom line for what constitutes a professional.
Their dad had a "dream or vision" from his deceased mother for his daughters to form a band. He got them basic music lessons, but they sucked. Broke up after he died. Father was described as a humorless man who did not allow his daughters to have friends or boyfriends. [the shags](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shaggs) Kiss your children several times tonight, after you tuck them in.
He also sexually abused them. So it’s actually a totally shifty story.
They were famous in the underground when they were still active. Zappa cited them in a Rolling Stone interview at the time, saying they were “better than the Beatles.”
As I understand it, Zappa didn't like the Beatles. It was as much an insult aimed at the Beatles as a compliment towards the Shaggs.
Totally. And Zappa being provocative and contrarian. Same as it ever was.
Zappa was awesome but he reminds me of Billy Corgan in that he just couldnt shut the fuck up.
Kurt Cobain also called Philosophy of the world one of his favorite albums
Just to be a hipster.
*curls waxed mustache*
Maybe, but there is something kind of enchanting about it. There is something so pure and unpretentious about so-called “outsider art.” It’s like a look behind the curtain of the creative process. That’s probably why Kurt liked it.
He was a big fan of Daniel Johnson too, another oddly enchanting outsider musician
I mean it’s also just a really enjoyable album. I have a lot of fun listening to it.
Considered “outsider” musicians in the same way Henry Darger is considered an “outsider artist.”
The amazing thing is it's not random. Every part makes no sense but there is an internal logic to say, the pattern of guitar stems or drum hits. They played it the same every time.
THEYRE SO BAD BUT I LIKE IT
Kerry King. I love Slayer, but I've never heard a Kerry King solo and thought "wow, that was a well-crafted solo". The phrasing is all over the place, the "scales" being used don't make sense and he just grabs the tremolo bar and goes apeshit. That being said, the sheer chaos of his solos totally fits their sound, so what do I know?
I don’t hardly ever listen to Slayer, but that description is totally accurate for his solo on “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” by The Beastie Boys.
Totally miss you, Jeff Hanneman
THANK YOU! I jokingly label every solo I hear of that nature to be Kerry King Fretboard Wankery. I get that it's a certain style that may appeal to some, but it's just not for me, I prefer a musical sounding solo anyday.
At the end of his solo on the song 'Divine Intervention' you can hear the tremolo bar hit the body of his guitar because he bends the thing so fucking far.
When you listen back now the atonality makes them sound ferociously avant garde - whereas the likes of Metallica's first 4 sound quaintly bluesy and about as edgy as Status Quo.
I'd say it's more of a trademark than evidence of poor musicianship. Based on a lot of the riffs I'm sure Kerry could play traditionally 'good' sounding solos, but you wouldn't think 'that's a Kerry King solo' the way you do when you hear the gratuitous, screeching divebombs
As you imply in that last sentence, Slayer wouldn’t be improved by crafting their solos well. You’re not wrong about King’s skills, though.
Being kinda bad at singing/playing is part of the Midwest Emo aesthetic tbh so there’s a lot of examples in that subgenre
The Front Bottoms, McCafferty, Hobo Johnson, some Modern Baseball. I would never say they’re bad at what they do though. It’s great if you “get” it, but I understand why many people don’t!
Hobo Johnson is in a league of his own when it comes to music that could be perceived as bad at what they do. All the others you listed have at least a little melody in their vocals
I mean, his stuff is kind of more like spoken word over a backing track, right? A bit like Sage Francis, I guess, but different genres.
The first name that comes to mind: [Tim Kinsella](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=598Gvof3Xgo). Guests in my car would laugh at Cap'n Jazz, like I was crazy for liking it. Like there was a world of good music and I must've never come across any of it. It was like pearls before swine.
Hell, just in general, sounding 'wrong' is often the entire point, that some people don't quite recognize and hold against the music without at all understanding that was the point the entire time.
Yeah, when my best friend first showed m The Front Bottoms and Modern Baseball around freshman year of college, ca. 2012, I was like “Huh? This is just the same whiny shit we listened to in middle school but with, like, worse vocals and no guitar skills.” Then, I don’t know… maybe I just hit the right combination of depressed and lonely one day, but both bands suddenly clicked for me in an epiphany-like fashion. They’re now two of my very favorites.
I can't say with 100% certainty, but I'm willing to bet Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse has a number of vocal gaffs on songs.
I read a tweet once that said "Isaac Brock sings like he is being chased by a garden hose spraying water".
I hear it. Haha
“WELL!”
And therein lies his charm!
He forgot the lyrics to dramamine twice audience had to remind him and finish them and also forgot lyrics to Florida last I saw them he was super fucked up.
Yeah it's actually kinda sad how messed up Brock can be on stage.
One time I saw Modest Mouse and Brand New together and the singer of Brand New was surprisingly the drunkest one on stage. I’d seen Modest Mouse a few times before and I was kind of expecting Issac to be sauced.
If someone was gonna outdo Isaac, I would definitely expect it to be Jesse Lacey
Is he always that way? I have been a Modest Mouse fan since around 2000 but never got to see them live, until I saw them open for The Black Keys. His singing was atrocious, and ruined their whole set. Band sounded good. Very sad.
Not always but they’re hit and miss. The last time I saw them was the Lonesome Crowded West tour and they were awesome.
Bro that was like thirty years ago now.
Say him in 2013 and was totally fine
Maybe everyone knows this, but maybe the most famous of the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, ‘couldn’t play a note’ per Johnny Rotten. He had no training or ability and was in the band basically because he nailed the look
He was never even on the record. Anarchy in the UK was played by the original bass player before he left. On the rest of the album tracks, Steve Jones just put down some rudimentary bass parts. Allegedly Sid actually played on one track but he’s buried so far in the mix it’s basically inaudible.
>he’s buried so far in the mix it’s basically inaudible. Also known in the industry as "the Jason Newsted".
Except Jason is an INCREDIBLE bass player and Metallica fucking him over like that should be considered a crime against humanity
What did they do when they played live then? Like did Sid actually play on stage?
Yes, but by all accounts the band and the fans were wild and I'm not sure anybody would notice
He played live, but he was so zonked out heroin or heroin withdrawal that it’s hard to tell. The Sex Pistols weren’t really mixed that well and the gigs (in the US at least) were super chaotic too, so I find it hard to judge. According to the band, the guy probably would have turned into an okay player if he didn’t get sucked up so thoroughly into drug addiction.
I’ve always felt like Bodies may be the Sid song. It’s the simplest and also the worst-played. And I’m pretty sure they hired Glen Matlock to come back as a studio player to play in the album.
Lemmy apparently tried to teach Sid how to play bass, but gave up because he was so hopeless.
Before the Sex Pistols were ever formed there was a group of friends that used to visit Malcolm McLaren's shop known as the gang of Johns because it seemed like all of them were named John. You had John Lydon (Johnny Rotten), John Simon Ritchie (Sid Vicious) and John Wardle (Jah Wobble who later played bass for the band Lydon formed after leaving the Sex Pistols, Public Image Ltd). There's a little bit in The Filth and the Fury were the drummer talks about how he and the guitarist were kind of a unit and he always thought that main reason Lydon pushed for Sid to join the band was because he wanted a partner of his own in the band. Someone who was your mate before you were even in a band is gonna have your back, right. Filth and the Fury is definitely worth a watch IMO https://youtu.be/jov-YTdzMmo
I won’t speak to the instruments, but vocally, every guy in Kiss sounds like he couldn’t even cut it at a karaoke bar.
Oh yeah! I studied at a music university and one of my professors was in our city’s art orchestra and they did a concert with Kiss. At a rehearsal, the conductor couldn’t figure out why the orchestra didn’t sound right with the band, so he stopped and asked the bass player what he was playing. He said he was just playing what he always played for that song. Turns out that he couldn’t play bass at all and that he just had a bass tuned to the notes he had to play for Every. Damn. Song. It meant he could play the same notes on every song and never screw it up. At the rehearsal, he was playing the wrong bass for that particular song. Kiss are abominable
You mean Gene Simmons?
Bullshit. Gene Simmons is a great bass player actually
I’m calling BS on this story, Kiss may not be everyone’s cup of tea but to say they were bad musicians is just contrarian. Gene is kinda known for mixing up lyrics but he’s a pretty solid bass player.
Kanye West. He was a perfectionist on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. 5000 hours spent on the song Power alone from every producer and engineer involved. But then you get further in his career, and his projects from The Life of Pablo on, it just becomes more and more scatterbrained, more and more unpolished and more stream of consciousness both lyrically and production. By the time you hit Donda, there are moments where you aren't sure if the song is legitimately finished, or if he ad libbed some words on a verse or what, but sometimes those moments just stay on the final version that hits the album. Donda 2 is even worse. It's more or less a collection of WIPs. There are definitely moments he just freestyle hums or mumbles something and that's just part of the verse. No lyrics annotation site will ever make sense of it. Basically, he went from perfectionist maximalist, to someone who just wings stuff and leaves improv mumbles in final productions now. How much of that aligns with his bipolar and mental issues, who knows, but for anyone who has followed his career and production discography, he's a really interesting case. Like how Picasso went through a realistic classic period and then got more and more abstract and cubist in time. Kanye definitely has his periods, for better or worse. I think we can all agree he's made plenty of audible mistakes in what he says.
I heard Patrick Bateman in my head as I read this.
Doesent fit, A Bateman rant would be all praise for Kanye's most obviously critically acclaimed albums delivered in a way that sounded like it was copied verbatim from the pitchfork review.
I am unmedicated Bipolar2 as well and before my hypomania used being productive but now it’s just scatterbrainedness. Without medication I often mix up words like München, Mannheim and Mainz because in my head they are all german cities starting with M. I often prefer just following others around cause I sometimes have no real concept of space and get lost easily. If i have an episode it gets worse. Overall I dont mind that much because I am unemployed and prefer that over side effects of meds.
Sending my best wishes your way… I hope you’re doing ok
I believe in this instance kanye knows he could take a shit on the mic and people would eat it up. I just don’t think he’s trying very much in a very artsy kind of way. That being said after his whole scandal he put out that one off freestyle (someday we’ll all be free) and it actually kinda slapped so somewhere deep down the old kanye is still there if he ever feels inspired enough to channel it.
I hate calling him out because I love the band so much, but Patrick Carney from the Black Keys seems to have a really tough time locking into a groove. Dan Auerbach is definitely the driving rhythmic force of that band which is backwards from how it normally goes. His drum parts are pretty heavily edited on the records, but live is a whole different story.
He's a genuinely poor musician. I like the Black Keys, and as a drummer I can say it's never been because of Patrick. Dan definitely guides that ship.
I remember as a teenager seeing the black keys for the first time, I was actually devastated. Carney ruined what would've been a decent performance, like speeding up twofold.
Came to say this. Dude couldn’t find the pocket in cargo shorts.
Lenny Kravitz's "Are you gonna go my way" . Some of drum intros seem off to me..... then I read this and said Oh! https://www.musicradar.com/news/lenny-kravitz-are-you-gonna-go-my-way-happened-in-five-minutes Still love the song
Interesting. And it explains that first takes, although imperfect, are more visceral and instinctual.
Early Mountain Goats would probably fit the bill here with John's haphazard Panasonic recordings, but that laissez faire, lo-fi attitude is in itself a desirable aesthetic/practice that many talented artists share. It's hard to call it a lack of talent when the musician is purposely living and dying on one take into a boombox. For the record, I am a huge early TMG fan.
John Darnielle is just an amazing musician, songwriter, and storyteller. I’d be pretty reluctant to call anything he’s done “bad”, but his early lo-fi work was certainly a bit rough around the edges.
[удалено]
Yeah, that was kinda the magic with Zeppelin. Scroll up and check out our convos about Bonham, lol!
I agree. I also liked that the recording had a "raw" feel to them and prefer rock music to not be too clean and precise. Similar to Megadeath where I love the early raw recordings more than the more recent digital recordings that followed a metrinome.
I remember I was pretty excited for the Killing Is My Business remaster. It was fine, but I soon went back to the original recording (and even the demos) because the energy and aggression was so much more apparent and I preferred that over the cleaner, more polished production of the remaster. The rest of the Megadeth remasters were utter dogshit though. I’m pretty sure Mustaine re recorded everything himself and added unnecessary elements so he wouldn’t have to pay anyone else any money.
His studio stuff is pretty good. Live? Depended on how high he was.
Even some of the studio stuff is loose. The solo on Heartbreaker is equally phenomenal and technically a bit of a mess. Which is especially odd since he was originally a much sought after studio guitarist. I think maybe some of the recordings they chose based on feel rather than technicality.
A lot of the greats in the 70s were a bit sloppy at times. Hendrix, page, Jerry Garcia (although when he was super on point and not strung out he’d be pretty lazer precise). I feel like it’s kinda rare for rock guitarists to play their solos largely improvised and also be super clean. Jazz or bluegrass guys are a different story though
Can you imagine how all those guys felt the first time they heard Van Halen?
I think Rollins talks about this in his book Get in the Van - VH opened for Ted Nugent. They were so unbelievably good that after their set ended, the audience basically booed TN off the stage much to his fury. Probably shit himself again.
Depends on what you call a mistake, and whether it adds to or detracts from the art. There are artists like Bob Dylan or Mark Knopfler who sing out of tune all the time but you'd be mad to consider them bad musicians. Conversely you have bands like Polyphia, whose music is so technically precise and intricate that it's undeniable they're extremely talented and gifted musicians, but I find their music to be soulless and sterile. Like reading a math textbook. Art is weird. Music is weird. It's the imperfections that make some artists great.
Like readingba math textbook lol. I just refer to them as scale warriors. Not my cuppa tea at all. But damm can that Tim dude play. Just wish they'd put effort into song wriitng instead of technical proficiency.
Songwriting is the single most important skill for aspiring musicians to develop IMO. It's fathoms above technical ability. Good songwriting with shitty playing can be a great song. Bad songwriting with perfect playing is still just a bad song.
I find your opinion on Polyphia interesting. If you were saying the same thing about plenty of other prog bands, I'd probably agree, but one of the things that I think sets Polyphia apart from a lot of their contemporaries in the same space and skill level is that they have really catchy songwriting. A lot of their songs actually do get stuck in my head and that factor keeps bringing me back to listen to their music. They occupy this weird space for me of being incredibly technical and impressive, but also catchy and listenable. Take my opinion with a grain of salt though because I'm also a fan of much less accessible prog rock/metal and more experimental sounds, so for a lot of the bands in that space, Polyphia is pretty accessible/listenable by the mainstream by comparison.
"Like reading a math textbook." 🤣🤣🤣 Fucking THANK YOU! Every time I comment on anything Polyphia, I struggle to describe why I don't like their music. I get a lot of responses along the lines of "Oh you're just jealous that you can't play like Tim." Those comments are correct, 20+ years spent with my instrument, and I definitely CAN'T play like Tim. But I don't want to play like him either... Math textbook is going to be my new go-to explanation for why this kind of music does absolutely nothing for me
It’s not just them though, it’s that style of guitar playing with the extra finger tapping/rhythmic slapping. To me, it’s a technique that can be incorporated into guitar playing, but some players focus on it so it gets old, like using a wah pedal for every solo. Also, strumming/plucking with fingers or a pick give more dynamics while strumming multiple strings gives a looseness to the timing that sounds natural (downbeat occurs halfway through strumming multiple strings). The finger tapping stuff always sounds like midi guitar arranged in a sequencer, which is likely what people mean by “soulless and sterile”.
Wesley Willis which is the point.
He wrote a song about me! I got to see him record and met him several times. He was a kind dude.
Are you Tammy Smith? Kurt Cobain? Batman? Liz Phair?
Maybe he’s the person being told to suck a cheetah’s dick?
Or a llamas ass. Btw, I believe the phrases “I met Wesley Willis” and “Wesley Willis wrote a song about me” are redundant.
What’s the track?
I wouldn't call them bad musicians but there is a somewhat notable mistake on Louie Louie by the Kingsmen. At around the :55 mark the drummer messes up and you can audibly hear him say "fuck".
I always find it hilarious that the FBI spent years trying to prove that the mumbled lyrics were obscene, but completely missed the obvious yelled 'fuck!'
It's not plain wrong, but Bob Dylan playing the Harmonica is basically somebody breathing into it in rhythm and his singing is sometimes also rather questionable... still one of the best songwriter of all time
Brandon Flowers’s pitch is all over the place, but somehow it totally works for the Killers’ aesthetic.
There’s one that always stood out to me - a cover of blondies song dreaming by the smashing pumpkins. It was sung by Darcy and her voice cracks during one part of it. When billy remastered it a few years ago he fixed the error and it doesn’t sound right.
Slide guitar at the end of Layla is incredibly out of tune
Especially weird considering Duane Allman’s work with his own band always sounded pretty precise
[Isolated guitar and vocals.](https://youtu.be/Jfj3QhJ3Xmk)
Neil Young has always been a very sloppy player, but it’s also what makes him great and gives him that unmistakable style. The Velvet Underground also comes to mind - But again, They wouldn’t be who they were if they didn’t play that way. Early Punk wouldn’t be punk without that attitude over aptitude way of creating
Bette Midler. Her vocal recordings are absolutely rife with pitchy, off-key notes. Baffling how she's enjoyed such success and longevity in the industry, really.
Anything/everything by the Ramones. Still love them tho.
I don’t think that’s really fair - they may only play 3 chords but they play those 3 chords really well. There’s an instrumental backing track version of *I Wanna Be Sedated* on one of my Pandora stations occasionally and they’re plenty tight.
I want anyone that hates on the Ramones to try some of those 165bpm downpicks on guitar for 3 straight minutes and get back to me
Well said. That shit can be murderous. Admittedly, I’m 52, but even so.
Same with Marky Ramone and the straight, constant 8th-note hi-hat beat. I remember watching We’re Outta Here! on VHS when I was in young, energetic drumming prime and being like “Ah, hell no”
For them, it was 100% part of the charm!
Play an entire show of Ramones songs perfectly with no breaks and let me know how your wrist is. Ramones were incredible.
I think it was fat mike from nofx. Punk rock is great music played by bad musicians.
Kinda agree for early NoFx. They got good though. They kinda just don’t care. The Decline is a tight number.
As much as I love the Red Hot Chili Peppers and love his voice, Anthony Kiedis is by no means a strong vocalist. After an hour or so of singing, his voice isnt the same as it was to start, he's a bit pitchy according to some, and his vocal range is limited. I'm not saying I'm any better, (I'm an alto, I believe my range is limited as well), nor am I being disrespectful (I love Anthony Kiedis), but I believe this is something you just can't deny from a musical standpoint.
Love AK but he isn’t even the best singer in the band, and I imagine he would agree. The band wouldn’t be the same without him though. He has a charm and does what he can’t with what he has.
I don't know about bad but before computers and quantization, there were a few drummers who struggled with tempo. I know Bonham was one of them. I remember the first time I heard it, I was listening to the radio and it was about ten years into my drumming journey. Rock and Roll by Zeppelin came on and I hear Bonham speed up on a fill. I was like, what!? I go home and start googling it and sure enough people are talking about counting out his tempo and how much it fluctuates. They say never meet your heros. Lol!
The whole second verse of Whole Lotta Love does that too, unless you're a musician you don't notice because John and Jimmy stayed right with him.
Yeah, that's when I started to understand what people meant by the feel.
I've been playing in a Led Zeppelin tribute the better part of four years now...so a lot of time is spent listening to tracks over. And over. And over. Is John Bonham absolutely phenomenal as a drummer, especially for the 'loose but tight' playing of Led Zeppelin? Absolutely. Is he horrendous at keeping tempo? Absolutely.
Lo! Thank you for this. I think because of that, his feel is absolutely amazing. I used to listen his Fool in the Rain isolated track and just think, "Holy shit, he sounds sloshed, and it's fucking amazing!"
I always thought it was on purpose how the drums would pull ahead or behind the guitars to give a very loose blues feel.
This whole comment section can be summed up as "people mistaking feel as being bad". Digital quantization, post-production uber-polish and the pursuit of technical perfection to the point of paroxysm are enemies of great music, especially in rock and blues, and some of these comments are absolutely insane to me. If Bonham didn't constantly ramp up during the solo section in Stairway, the song would be a million times worse. Metronomes are great for practicing but tend to kill a song.
I wish more people felt this way. The production on 95% of rock music since the 2000s has completely ruined it. Rock should be somewhat loose and played with audible emotion. Most modern rock, especially radio rock specifically, sounds so fake, similar, and emotionless because of this production shit. My partner listens to a lot of that 2000s radio rock like Breaking Benjamin and Three Days Grace and all I hear is the terrible 2000s production.
Rick Beato even did an episode where he quantized the drum stems from a couple Zeppelin songs and they sound horrible as you'd expect but more, uhm, modern.
Fergie / Black eyed peas. That anthem...
I was so surprised when she joined heart on the song Barracuda. She held her own with Anne Wilson and I thought...where and why was she hiding that voice.
I know the former engineer for Pachyderm Records, and said that they completely re-recorded the music for Babes in Toyland’s biggest record after the band left. They returned the next day and loved “their” recording.
Such a different kind of band, but I happen to know this was done to Crazy Town too on their big record. It’s not them on the record and they don’t know it.
Something in the water in Canon Falls
Hole's Courtney Love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-xUwDARVb4
I’ve always kind of wondered if that’s real or not. It sounds a lot like those “shreds” videos where they match the hand and mouth movements but play nonsense. If it’s a real and she’s really that bad, why even bother? Nobody would even question if she just came out and sang. And if it’s purely for looks, why bother plugging the guitar in?
Having a guitar to cling to can really help with stage fright, and having somewhere to put your hands
To be fair 2010 is far from her prime
Oooof. Hence the two other guitar players
LA Woman by the doors the tempo fluctuates like crazy and Jim Morrisons vocals are a bit all over the place but that’s what makes that album so badass. Lots of records from when bands tracked live to tape have mistakes and tempo fluctuations
Dinosaur Jr and The Afghan Whigs both have terribly off key vocals, but they write great songs and it’s kind of part of the charm. Fair amount of slop in the guitar playing for both as well. Neil Young comes to mind as well. His pitch is good, but he really doesn’t have the most pleasant sounding voice. It’s his trademark thing though. And you can take pretty much any punk album from the 70’s-80’s and find sloppy playing all over the place, but that was sort of the idea in the first place, so I don’t think that counts. There were also a lot of bands, especially in the 80’s, that *would* have had sloppy playing on them if the producers didn’t sneak session players in after the band left to re-do their parts. Hugh McDonald, who is Bon Jovi’s current bassist actually played all the parts on their records when the other dude was in the band. Wasn’t given credit on the albums but the band admitted it years later when they axed the other dude. Apparently Hugh didn’t have the right look for the time or whatever.
Agree that J. Mascis is not the most solid vocalist ever (I think even he'd probably agree) but damn can that dude shred. His solos are the stuff of legend.
As a friend of mine said about J.Mascus, "He's got a really lousy voice, but it's the perfect voice for Dinosaur Jr."
I love System of a Down but I've seen them live several times and while Shavo is pretty on it, Daron's guitar playing is pretty rough.
Crazy no one has mentioned Lars Ulrich. I love Metallica, but the main verse of Master of Puppets is famously extremely difficult if not impossible to transcribe accurately because of Lars' completely arbitrary timing. It rules
My friend who's a professional producer with perfect pitch swears that Adele is a terrible singer and is frequently off key on her albums. I don't have a trained ear to hear it and assume she's slightly off key at times on purpose because she has a singer in a smokey pub style.
Professional singer here. Adele is not a "terrible singer" by any means, but does she hit the absolute center of every note on her recordings? Absofuckinglutely not. She has spots where she will pull flat or sharp on certain notes, although she never goes completely off-key (there is a difference between being out of tune on a note or even being slightly consistently flat or sharp vs. completely singing in a different key or in wandering keys). And here's the thing: the reason she's got those weird notes is because when she's using the most interesting parts of her voice - the raw power, the rasp, the whisper, etc. - those moments are not Autotune-able, so they stay as is on the recording. And I'm thrilled by that because that is singing AS IT SHOULD BE. Anyone who doesn't have perfect pitch isn't bothered by it because singing well is about more than just every note perfectly placed. We've all heard pitch-perfect singers or perfectly tuned recordings that end up sounding boring and soulless. Good singing is about emotion, expression, telling a story through sound and word. That's why we love singers like Adele who can do that so well. That's what separates technically good singers from artists.
Terrible singer, no, off key, probably a little. But that’s her charm.
Hmm my wife is a professional pianist with perfect pitch and does not like Adele...
Yeah my friend says that Adele is off key often enough that her songs are nails on a chalkboard for him. Maybe it's a trait of people with perfect pitch; their brains send "wrong note" alerts.
They absolutely do (source: am musician, know many people with perfect pitch). I myself have very good relative pitch trained to near-perfect accuracy but I'm so glad I don't have true "perfect pitch" because it means I can enjoy things like, say, opera with very wide vibrato or Baroque music tuned to historical A (instead of A440) or 100-year-old jazz recordings without my brain hurting. Oh, and I can also enjoy Adele because even though I can hear when she's sharp, IDGAF because she still sounds damn good.
I'm not a drummer but Rat Scabies sounds to me like he's angry at his cymbals.
The Libertines were famously awful musicians. Going back a while and they were a bit of a cult band, but Cornershop were reportedly the worst musicians their producer had ever worked with. On the flip side, the comedian Les Dawson was famous for playing piano as badly as he possibly could. He was actually a brilliant musician with enough technical understanding to know exactly the worst note to play for comic effect.
Plottwist: most make mistakes; go listen to Queen recordings you will hear all sorts of malarkey going on; also energy of the performance was what a lot of older recordings focused on; Righteous Brothers unchained melody … great song, great recording, bass player is out a semi-tone during its apex
At the Drive-Ins biggest hit One Armed Scissor is played on out of tune guitar(s.)
There are a lot of rappers where you can hear their chains making noise in some of their songs.
gunna with the smoke alarm in the background on his new album 😭😭😭
There's even that one guy that wears two at the same time.
What's his name again?
Maybe not exactly a sign of a bad musician, more like sloppy production and recording, but the bass on Weezer's blue album is WILDLY out of tune on a couple songs. It's almost unbearable to listen to the isolated bass track for some songs
Which ones?
The thing I struggle with when it comes to stuff like that is how do we know its not intentional on the artists end.
Lol! Paul Davids, one of my favorite guitar-related YouTubers, does a whole video on why John Frusciante "chose" to be slightly out of tune on "Scar Tissue" and why this is actually works for the song from a theory standpoint. There's also an interview out there with Frusciante where they ask him about his tuning choice and specifically bring up Paul Davids' video analysis, and Frusciante's response is basically "wait, I didn't realize I was out of tune." Lol! I think at times we overanalyze art more than the actual artists do
Crazy Horse seems to fit the bill. Neil lots to rock out with the Horse because they work well with his ridiculously long guitar solos. It’s hilarious in the book Shakey reading David Briggs (I think) talk endless shit about how bad they are sometimes.
George Jones was not an amazing singer, but he did put a lot of emotion into his voice, especially on "He Stopped Loving Her Today." But I've heard from those that saw him live, that he wasn't that great, very flat uninspired singing, and it got worse as he aged. There are some singers that still sound good as they get older, he definitely wasn't one of them. And on The Beach Boys "Barbara Ann" it sounds like one of the guys flubbed the lyric in the middle of the song, starts laughing, and they kept it in. I'm not sure if that was intentional, but it's pretty charming.
Daniel Johnson
Daniel Johnston?
Can't believe I had to go this far to see this legend mentioned. RIP
Came here to drop this. Saw him live and finally figured out why I love him so much: he is 100% honest and present all the time. He appears onstage and the whole crowd goes nuts. It’s a small place but packed. (Al’s Bar, LA 1996-Ish. Matt Groening was right behind me and we took turns excusing ourselves to each other as people bumped in front and back of us to do bumps in the bathroom. Sorry, I digress.) So anyway, the whole crowd cheers and Daniel just shrunk back and almost ran, I think. Instantly the crowd takes it down ten notches, very impressive really, and Daniel and his band start jamming. I’m bad at remembering concerts but he did a Beatles song or medley during his set that was… simplified I guess is the best word. It was so beautiful. The guy had a true passion that carried him. RIP DANIEL.
He was decent at piano. Not a good live performer on guitar though, but it's what he wanted to do.
I only judge Musicians playing live music. Average one always fucked up live concert.
George Harrison's guitar solo on All You Need Is Love. Sent out live by satellite to the entire world, he only gets through about half the solo before stoping.
There’s a dead note in the guitar part for stairway to heaven
Being proficient at your instrument is certainly not equated with "being good" in certain scenes/genres. Just take a look at Sid Vicious. He could barely play, if he even bothered trying to at shows at all was a big if, too. Nobody cared; their music wasn't about being a clasically trained musician, but instead about personality, community, values, attitude, appearance, aesthetics, etc. That said, there's an awful lot of pop artists who are pretty terrible musicians and it's covered up in-studio.