OPINION: Somehow the people at Rolling Stone forgot to listen to the worst song on “Thriller” while calling an amazing record terrible.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I love lists. I especially love lists that nobody asked for. I extra especially love lists that nobody asked for that start a conversation that nobody would otherwise have if not for the list.
Such is the case when Rolling Stone, the music publication that often drops lists covering any and all range of musical output, recently released a list called “50 Terrible Songs on Great Albums.” As you can imagine, the list is exactly what it purports to be. The list (the byline says Andy Greene who likely pulled it altogether) reflects the various persons who undertook the assignment’s best attempt at finding terrible songs on great albums. They picked classic albums to run through, like The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” and “The White Album” (among other projects from “The Boys from Liverpool,” as they were often referred), Taylor Swift’s “Red,” songs from various Bob Dylan and Guns ‘N Roses albums, etc.
Now, deciding what constitutes a terrible song is completely and entirely subjective — as we all know, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. But there are definitely songs by landmark artists that are considered…less than, and, to be frank, every album has a worst song on it, even if “worst” is only as a consequence of an album being chock full of amazing records.
As I do on most lists that include songs by mainstream artists, I look for the contributions by Black artists. This list has two. Let’s start with the one that actually makes sense. Coming in at number 33, Kanye West’s song “Drunk and Hot Girls” featuring Mos Def makes an appearance. The song is from West’s 2007 album “Graduation,” which is largely considered a classic boasting songs like “Good Morning,” “Flashing Lights,” “Stronger,” “Good Life” — you know this album. Now, when the album dropped, I vividly remember the conversation around “Drunk and Hot Girls” with most folks declaring it, easily, the worst song on the album. But further, most people wondered why that song even made the album as its…well, bad. It’s a terrible record. Even now as I listen to it, I wonder what the thought process was to keep it on the album — one that’s largely a no-skip album, save for “Drunk and Hot Girls.” I’ll bet even Kanye knows (now) that’s its trash.
Cool cool cool.
But where Rolling Stone was smoking rocks is the subject of consternation from more than a few people on social media. At number 20, Rolling Stone decided to declare “The Lady in My Life,” the final song on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” — one of the biggest selling albums of all time and arguably one of the best albums of all time — as the terrible song on the album.
To wit:
“If Michael Jackson had just capped off Thriller with track eight instead of track nine, he would have created one of the most flawless works in music history. But for reasons that are hard to fathom, he tacked “The Lady in My Life” onto the end.”
It’s rare that I use words like “poppycock” but this occasion deserves it. Especially since there seems to be a clear and unconscionable mistake here. How, praytell, do the purveyors of this list discern that “The Lady in My Life” not only doesn’t belong on the album but is terrible, when in order to get to that final track you have to listen to the actual terrible song on the album: “The Girl is Mine” featuring Paul McCartney.
I’m not the only person to feel this way (at least about “The Lady in My Life”), legendary music producer and artist Jermaine Dupri weighed in on the discussion via X. Attached to a screenshot of the blurb, Dupri wrote the following:
“Like this is the reason R&B music no longer gets the love that it’s supposed to, the Grammys, don’t televise the categories and then one of our longest lasting music publications @rollingstone prints some bullsh– like this, who eva wrote this needs to be thrown out the building, like Eddie Murphy and Beverly Hills cop.”
Now look, further in the write-up, the blurber kinda sorta toed the line saying that the song doesn’t belong on an album featuring “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “Human Nature,” “Thriller,” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” The album has nine records in total and the writer listed five of the most notable songs in pop music history. Here’s the problem, “The Lady in My Life” might not be as notable as that murderer’s row of songs — throw “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” in there as well — but it’s the most soulful record on the album, and by a long shot. There isn’t a Black person alive who doesn’t like “The Lady in My Life,” especially the last, roughly, two minutes and thirty seconds of the record which is dripping with so much soul that a bottle of activator just appeared in my hand and it might have a “Soul Glo” label on it.
Meanwhile, “The Girl is Mine” is actually a terrible record, in my humble opinion. Sure, Michael’s vocals on the record are amazing but if any song should have been left on the cutting room floor, it’s “The Girl Is Mine,” but of course, it was the first single. Look, the song is bad. The song is goofy. It’s the least interesting song on the album and is even almost offensively…limp. You want to talk about a song that doesn’t belong on an album with “Billie Jean,” it’s THIS one. Especially because “Baby Be Mine,” the song before it on the album, is SO much better and is Michael in his bag. One can only conclude that “The Girl is Mine” was made and released to be a chart grab, meanwhile every other song on the album is markedly better. In fact, at this point in my life, the only reason I listen to “The Girl is Mine” is because I’ve heard “Thriller” a cool fifty-leven times in my life and I’m so used to hearing it that I just let it play, but I assure you, even as a kid I thought the song wasn’t good. I feel the same now at my big age. I’m right about this, Rolling Stone.
How the writers of Rolling Stone came to the conclusion that if there’s a terrible song on the album that the most R&B song on the album is the worst, but terrible (their list, not mine) is why people hate lists. For one, they could have left “Thriller” off altogether and nobody would have noticed. I’m with Jermaine Dupri here, Rolling Stone, this inclusion is nonsense and blatantly wrong.
As we say in the Black community, you can be loud or you can be wrong, you can’t be both. Rolling Stone was both on this go’ round.
I guess this is what happens when you wanna be startin’ somethin’.
I’ll see myself out.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||[],g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(“has-featured-video”,”true”)})}();
More must-reads:
