(via Rolling Stone) By Richard Gehr, Andy Greene, Keith Harris, Maura Johnston, Jason Newman, Christopher R. Weingarten
As much as we love our favorite artists, it’s hard to say that any of them are perfect. Here are 22 iconic artists who have been briefly lured by drugs, laziness, novelty, over-production, poor judgement or, in the case of Brian Wilson, rap music.
Elvis Presley, “Confidence” (1967)
Picking the worst song Elvis recorded for his wretched Sixties flicks is a little like picking your least favorite terminal disease. But where the exceptionally strong-stomached can at least find some camp pleasure in goofy junk like “Yoga Is as Yoga Does” or “He’s Your Uncle Not Your Dad,” this worthless rewrite of “High Hopes” from 1967’s Clambake is about as fun as a tetanus shot – and less memorable. The lamest of the 42 songs that Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett wrote for the King, it’s dragged even further down by its grating kiddie chorus, a cartoonish backing track and Elvis himself, who sings as though contractually obligated to convey no human emotion…
David Bowie, “The Laughing Gnome” (1967)
The laughing gas is cranked up to 11 throughout this novelty number featuring the helium-esque, sped-up vocals of producer Gus Dudgeon and a giddy 19-year-old icon-to-be. Featuring a bassoon line Bowie would later employ in “Speed of Life” and elsewhere, the track is punctuated by a punishing barrage of gnomic wordplay and displays a dedication to chart life by any means necessary. (It reached Number Six upon its re-release in 1973.) Bowie threatened, but did not deliver, a “Velvet Underground-influenced” live version in 1990. “I should have done more for gnomes,” he later told NME. “I really could have produced a new sensibility for the garden gnome in Britain.”
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/22-terrible-songs-by-great-artists-20160615#ixzz4DAwZ7V3j
Every Moment Has A Song 