Perhaps we live in a world that is more cynical than ever.
Everything worth labelling is given a “post” before it, as we try to understand the art behind the irony. The days of wide-eyed fans going to live gigs and lapping up performative flamboyance are long gone; hip thrusts, hair shakes, and intense pouting would mostly be met with an eye roll.
As a cynic myself, however, could I write a list of annoying solos if I wasn’t? Society’s move to a more humorously in-tune state largely pleases me. But I can’t help but feel it’s come at the detriment of one of music’s great pleasures: the solo.
Yeah, sure, they can be the ultimate sign of self-indulgence, but when executed right, they open the door to transcendent musical bliss. But what is a solo done right? Well, firstly, it’s in keeping with the sonic palette of the song. Sure, it needs to veer off into its own separate path, but however winding and long that may be, it always needs to find its way back to the original journey seamlessly. If it does that, it can be as technical and lengthy as it wishes, giving fans a much-needed vortex in which they can detach from reality.
So a solo done wrong is often the antithesis of that. It feels laboured for the very fact that it’s a jarring distraction from everything else in the song. Notes that should be winding and hypnotic end up sounding clunky and make the listener feel as though they are bouncing between the walls of an uncomfortable slide.
But just because it is easy for us as fans to make a distinction between the good and bad doesn’t mean it is for musicians. The very idea that solos have to be self-indulgent makes the risk of losing judgment all the more prevalent, and so some of the all-time greats have fallen into the trap of laying down some shockers. Of all the worst, across all the instruments, here:
Paul McCartney – ‘Kreen Akrore’
When Paul McCartney embarked on a solo career in 1970, he was offered something no other artist would ever be in the instance of career infancy: freedom. He had spent the past decade cementing his legacy as a true sonic innovator and was therefore given grace to explore whatever avenue he felt fit. But he almost had those rights revoked on his very first album.
‘Kreen Akrore’ features a drum solo which would have hopefully been shut down by fellow band members had there been any. Reportedly inspired by a documentary about the Kreen-Akrore tribe, McCartney laid down a beat that was supposed to represent their hunting techniques. But it was far too abstract to be included in any wider arrangement and ended up sounding like the sort of thing a music teacher would create at the hands of their uninterested classroom. Like other solos on this list, it was nothing more than a product of the artists’ perceived invincibility.
Yoko Ono- Memphis Tennessee
A good solo should be steeped in unpredictability. It should be spontaneous and instinctive, reacting off the natural groove of the music it plays in. But when Chuck Berry joined John Lennon on stage at The Mike Douglas Show, to play Berry’s ‘Memphis Tennessee’, viewers thought the simple blues structure of the song would prevent Lennon and Ono from descending into abstract chaos.
That wasn’t quite the case. As the band sat in the pocket of a blues groove, Yoko grabbed the mic and provided one of the funniest, most irreverent vocal solos of all time. Her high-pitched screams cascaded over the top of the song, much to Berry’s dismay, not once, but twice. While it completely derailed the entire make-up of the song and served no sonic purpose, it has undoubtedly provided one of the funniest moments in music history.