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Most of the hit disco songs from the 1970s that still live on the radio. I wasn't alive to hear them the first time, but I've recently gotten into music with various disco elements. I used to cringe at the disco classics, but now I realize that they are good, but few songs are good enough to withstand continuous play for decades. Sometimes you'll hear a sample or an element used in another song, and realize: wow, there is a lot to the original, but still you don't want to hear it any more.
"Whip It" spent a lot of time on my list of songs I never need to hear again due to overplay, but it's recently reentered the songs I enjoy. "Lust for Life" is just teetering on that "too much" list thanks to several commercials and movies using, but ultimately the greatness of that riff makes me stick with it.
The first great song that I can't listen to anymore due to overplay is "I Heard It Through the Grapevine". All of these years later, that song still has the Big Chill/California Raisins stigma for me.
And I'm sorry, but I'll still turn up either version of "Bang a Gong".
You could mix it up with Gloria Jones' original "Tainted Love" or the Tom Jones/Art of Noise cover of "Kiss." Or the Tom Jones/Cardigans cover of "Burning Down the House" or the Tom Jones/Sterophonics cover of "Mama Told Me Not to Come". Basically anything Tom Jones I guess.
For me, Stairway To Heaven is the epitome of this. But I'm not sure I'd try to argue that it was ever really great. I'd often skip it when I'd play the LP.
few songs are good enough to withstand continuous play for decades.
This! Why on earth do I keep hearing songs like "Hey Nineteen" or "Take On Me" in department stores?! When I was young in the 80s, I never heard anything like Elvis or the Platters or Frank Sinatra (and those were the biggies) anywhere except on oldies stations.
- Almost anything by The Who, love them but could happily go ten years without hearing "Baba O'reily", "Who are You" or "Won't Get Fooled Again" again.
- Yea DF, I was sick of Stairway to Heaven in 1978.
- Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime. Used in too many movies.
- Anybody's version of All Along the Watchtower, just done to death.
I pretty much agree with everyone's list here, and will add to the pile:
- Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
- The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
- The Propellerheads with Shirley Bassey - History Repeating
- Bruce Springsteen - Born in the U.S.A.
(okay, so I'll admit that I'm biassed and wanted to mind bleach it and all other Springsteen tracks from initial hearing, but this one really is way overplayed in certain demographic groups)
there are some other Crystal Method and Go Team! type tracks that have achieved overplayed cliche status on stuff like action movies, skateboard videos, Kranked and Warren Miller episodes, automobile ads / shows, etcetera, but I don't think they're quite "mainstream" enough to have the true and abiding "for-fuck's-sake-PLEASE-shoot-them-into-the-sun!!" status of something like Journey's "Don't Stop Believing".
I have to say that "Twist And Shout" was the first thing that popped into my head, but I let it go. However, I've just heard it on a television ad, and yeah, I love it but am sick of it.
I couldn't identify about half the songs in the article. So maybe I can still have the joy of "hearing them for the first time."
I have a way of dealing with songs that are really good but overplayed: I don't have them in my music collection. I know I'll hear it again somewhere, and when I do, it's kind of a treat then.
Stairway to Heaven, any version, mainly because it was the first song I learned to play all the way through.
Free Bird, the studio version. The live version from "One More From The Road" still slays me.
Am I evil enough to do a MetaRadio show of all Great Songs Ruined by Overplay? Would anyone listen? Does anyone listen to my MetaRadio anyway? I could achieve the first ever negative audience! And LoudCity would have to pay us.
And Tom Jones' incredible ability to breathe new life into overplayed songs is oddly offset by the torture of trying to listen to his 1960's original hits... "It's Not Unusual"... "Delilah"... "Green Green Grass of Home"... "What's New Pussycat?" AAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!
richat, no I was a Who fanatic as a teenage/young adult and had every album on vinyl. The only stuff of theirs that I haven't heard too much of are Face Dances and It's Hard but they were close to unlistenable on the first spin.
Mad World from Donnie Darko. Man, in 2004 they would play that song at least 5 times a day on the radio. We used to try to count, but there were too many and we lost track.
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