5 Songs We Just Don’t Want To Hear Anymore

by: Ben Siimes

We all know the songs I’m talking about here. You flip on the radio and on any given day a song will come on that you have heard at least twice a day for the last year. It may be a fantastic song in its own right; it may be a steaming pile of overplayed garbage; regardless, you bolt for the radio dial like an incensed rhesus monkey trying to make the noise stop.
TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR: not all of these songs are bad, but all are overplayed and need to be stopped. I probably love all of these bands and their music (except for one on this list, I’ll let you guess which one that is)

5. Don’t Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult

More cowbell sometimes needs to be less cowbell. I love Blue Oyster Cult, but this song is getting really old. Yes, the SNL skit is still hilarious. It will be for the remainder of human existence. Whenever any other song with cowbell comes up, there will be that one guy listening who says “I think it needs more cowbell.” But this particular song is played ad infinitum and must be culled. Christopher Walken’s fever should not be cured in this case.

Suggested Listening: Pretty much everything else off of Agents Of Fortune, Spectres, and their debut album

4. Pretty Much Everything by AC/DC

We’re all familiar with the songs played by our favorite little schoolboy Aussie band. Hell, if you’ve ever watched more than 2 minutes of a sporting event you’ve probably heard at least 17 AC/DC songs. Filled with heavy power chords (all 3 of them) and screeching vocals, songs like Thunderstruck, Back In Black, and Shoot To Thrill have been played to death trying to pump up an audience before their team takes the field. But personally, if I hear those opening chords to Back In Black, I will always, always change the station to try to avoid it.

Suggested Listening: anything before Back In Black, as Bon Scott was able to create songs that didn’t all sound the same, whereas Brian Johnson led AC/DC can only create the same song over and over

 3. Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

This is probably the hardest piece on this article for me to write. I love Nirvana, and I love this song. It is a 90’s flannel-wearing, corporation-hating, adolescence-angsting anthem. The thing is…they have other songs. Many hardcore Nirvana fans will refer to this song as “Smells Like The Only Nirvana Song You Know” due to the overplaying of this song and the underplaying of many of their more creative songs. Nirvana is not a band that can just be summed up by this one song; they were an incredibly varied and talented band that created art from their music.

Suggested Listening: In Utero is truly an awe-inspiring album, going from slow, lyrically creative songs such as Heart-Shaped Box and All Apologies to speedy, gritty blitzes like Tourette’s and Scentless Apprentice.

2. Welcome To The Jungle by Guns N’ Roses

Where the last entry was hard for me to type out, this one is shockingly easy: Guns N’ Roses just needs to stop. Specifically Axl Rose. If someone could manage to extract every bit of Axl Rose from the GNR and replace it with someone with, you know, talent, I would be perfectly fine with the band (I’m totally ready for the GNR fanboys to send me hate, bring it on). But that is a rant for another day. Today I’m here to speak out against the “anthem” that is Welcome To The Jungle. Very much like AC/DC’s entire discography, Welcome To The Jungle is played at every sporting event since Appetite For Destruction came out. I have a personal vendetta against this song due to my school: at every UConn football game, when the defense brings the opposing team to a 3^rd down, they blast the intro to this song over the loud speakers up until the lyrics begin. For anyone who watches football, you know that there are a lot of 3^rd downs in any given game. A lot.

Suggested listening: Go listen to Slash’s solo work with Myles Kennedy, who has the range and feel of Axl’s screeching but has a pleasant sound coming out of his vocal chords, rather than the harpy-like intonations that Axl creates.

1. Rock And Roll by Led Zeppelin

It is not secret that I love Led Zeppelin more than life itself. They are the greatest band to ever walk this earth and I will defend that point with a passion only known by other Led Zeppelin fans and Star Wars fans (those guys are relentless; never mention anything about Jar Jar Binks in the company of those fanboys). But even a band of this magnitude and scope has some songs that just need to stop. Many of you are going to say ‘But wait, don’t you mean “Stairway To Heaven”? That song is soooooo overplayed.’ Stairway’s playtime doesn’t even come close to that of Rock And Roll in modern day rock radio. Back in the 70’s, I would probably say that you were right and then we’d both sit and listen to Stairway To Heaven on repeat for 8 hours while smoking dubious amounts of Mary Jane and pondering the meaning of cheese. But today, rock stations will blatantly play this song over and over again because of the crashing drums and driving guitar riff that Jimmy Page is famous for creating. But enough is enough, rock radio.

Suggested Listening: Go listen to Physical Graffiti, my personal favorite album of all time. Tracks like The Rover, Ten Years Gone, and In My Time Of Dying almost never get radio play and are far more complex and creative in their composition. Actually, just go listen to every Zeppelin album.