Bottom 1: it's only Mixed Emotions (but I like it)

[Lucia Lanigan]

The Prince thread got me thinking: what's the least defensible song you actually like by an otherwise obviously great artist/band? It got me thinking that because I think I might actually like Prince's "Batdance", although I've not heard it since I was 12 and can't be sure.

With the Rolling Stones, this pretty much translates to: "what's the latest Stones song you like?" - a "how far do you go?" challenge. Most people split after 1983's "Undercover Of The Night", and who can blame them. But I love 1989's "Mixed Emotions". It kind of dresses their tight mid-60s songwriting in the loosened wasteband of Exile On Main Street and has an endearing hint of middle-aged wistfulness about it. It also conjures horrific images of loppy-headed, headbanded crones lunging unconvincingly around wind-blown enormodomes with dollar-shaped cataracts in their eyes, which is not so good.

If it was on Exile On Main Street you'd all love it. Well, those of you that like Exile would, anyway.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Bottom 1: it's only Mixed Emotions (but I like it)

All the Tired Horses "by" Bob Dylan

The opening track to Self Portrait. He doesn't sing — or do anything else as far as I can tell — which given the quality of the album is a blessing, you haven't experienced real anguish until you've heard El Bobarino murder Take a Message to Mary. All the Tired Horses is weirdly compelling though, a female chorus repeats:

"All the tired horses in the sun
How'm I supposed to get any ridin' done? Hmm,mmm, mmmum."

over rising strings until fade-out. It's (deliberately?) ambiguous too, as "ridin'" could be "writin,'" which, lord knows, there's precious little of on the album, or this track.

I'll carry over Peach from the other thread as my least defensible — but favourite — Prince track. Obviously created for pole-dancers everywhere, only he could get away with the looped orgasmic moans.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Bottom 1: it's only Mixed Emotions (but I like it)

I've just downloaded that, and I like it too. You're expecting something to happen, but it just stays with it and it's quite charming, mildly affecting.

Is Self Portrait the album he spent naming the animals and talking about Jesus?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Bottom 1: it's only Mixed Emotions (but I like it)

No that was Slow Train Coming. Self Portrait is earlier (1970). It's his first bona fide clunker (intentionally so, if we're to believe his autobiography.) A double album mostly filled with bad cover versions and tossed off re-recordings of his own material. Even the hard-core find it hard to make any sort of case for it.

[Brandenburger Toro]

Bottom 1: it's only Mixed Emotions (but I like it)

NM - don't you mean Mick's Demotions?

Yet another reason to love that song...

AdeC is right, Self-Portrait is entirely without redeeming merit. I mean, there's some residual theoretical interest in it as one of his most extreme projects in the career-long effort to "disappear" from his own person. But you wouldn't want to, you know, listen to it, under any circumstances.

[Otto Katz]

Bottom 1: it's only Mixed Emotions (but I like it)

Love is Strong from that Voodoo Something album which came out well into the 90s is a good track, as is the one Keith Richards sings on the same album. The Worst I think it was called. It wasn't.

I love the Stones, but my cut-off point is probably Goats Head Soup. After that there are probably enough good songs to just about fill an album, and an awful load of crap.

[G-Man]

Bottom 1: it's only Mixed Emotions (but I like it)

I like the thread title.

For some reason, I've always liked Elvis' "Don't Cry Daddy". Is "Octopus' Garden" indefensible? If so, notch that one up for me too.

[Lucia Lanigan]

Bottom 1: it's only Mixed Emotions (but I like it)

Not sure if it qualifies, but I've been playing David Bowie's "Width Of A Circle", from the technically unclassic The Man Who Sold The World, a lot lately.

It's an ill-thought-out mess of prog rock, "being gay", and exaggerated Englishness, all encapsulated in the shrill exclamation (during Movement the Seconde) "His nebulous body swiyed above!" He sounds like Chaucer with his foot caught under an ox or something, but the band is smokin' and there's a frisson of pushing camp at beardy proggers, so it all just about works out.

The whole album's half-baked at best, but there's something about it. Perhaps "Black Country Rock" would be a better candidate, actually. That Marc Bolan impersonation, the aiming for total heaviosity and coming up with glam pop too sprawling to do its job. . . should be a load of old toss, but I like it.