LogFAQs > #969330065

Like I said, the cop is the best part of the scene! If the song included his part, it'd be somewhere in the "above 50 point" zone! Alas, in spite of the album's completeness, the nominated version ends without him.

...I suppose I could have fudged things a bit and included it myself to raise the score, but I didn't really think about it and just went with that one "as nominated" instead of taking any liberties to enhance the score. Well, moving along to #783--a song I was sure was going to get last place until it... didn't:

===================

#783: Philip Glass - Vessels (8:06):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJVxwPoHRSM&list=OLAK5uy_mDCT4_Ky0CAnSs7AexWupMqE4qQRsnc7s&index=2

Nominator: Sergio [12 Remaining]

Initial Score: 08.16
Revised Score: 12.04
Final Score: 12.04

(First Reaction: The parts without the vocalizations are fine, but those are very short and rare. Like "probably only account for 30 seconds or so" of this song's runtime short. The rest is... incredibly difficult for me to get through. I wanted to shut the song off after about a minute and it never got much better. Right now, this song is pretty clearly on its own tier below everything else nominated... there's still room for some songs to do worse, but I'm kinda hoping things don't get to that point.)

This song has the distinction of being the only song I hated on a first listen, which sounds bad -but- as I've said before, I enjoy using this topic series to expose myself to songs I wouldn't normally listen to & work out why I have such strongly negative reactions to them. Unfortunately, while I do think hatred is a bit too strong of a word for this song, the song is still... not the type of thing I enjoy and I don't think there's a lot to analyze about my negative reaction here.

A1.- While it's a bit of a running gag, I wouldn't say I truly hate non-lyric vocalizations in general. Indeed, there are some acapella songs I've enjoyed, and I'm sure you'll find a lot of vocalization mixed into songs I love because that is such a common and general aspect of music that trying to block vocalization from your playlist would be about as stupid as saying 'I prefer my music to be without sound". The less idiotic way of phrasing it would be a more generic 'there are types of vocalizing that I find displeasing to listen to and this song is one of those' which is not particularly funny or insightful, but is where we're at. If I had to try to point specific reasons I disliked these particular vocals;

A2.: There isn't much variation in the vocalizations, triggering a second response of "wow, this is the type of repetition that I dislike". You've pretty much heard everything their voices are going to do less than a minute into the song. This quickly leads to feelings of boredom and wanting something different to happen.

A3.: It could just be me, but the song feels like it's very "ascending to Heaven"-y... especially with the choir like vocals. Not really my jam or an environment I care to experience, even with the implied apocalypse accompanying it.

B: The instrumentation is a bit more interesting to me, but the choir often drowns it out completely. I think that's what I resented the most the first time around; I'd get excited that the choir was going away and something new was happening, only for them to come back in almost immediately and completely overshadow the part I was looking forward to. Now that I know that's what's going to happen and I'm going to be litening to the choir basically non-stop for the full runtime, it's not as agitating and I don't actively hate the experience... but it's also so strongly doing the opposite of things that I find appealing that the song may as well be the theme tune of a hypothetical Anti-Raetsel, who is probably a good person and actually 'appreciates art' and 'has valid reasoning behind her opinions' or something.

So... this is probably going to stay near the bottom of the list, but I'd say it's at least escaping the tier of things I hate, which is potentially a good thing?

[Final Thoughts: The brief moments without the choir are fairly pleasing. There's a sense of ascension and I haven't quite placed how it feels (regular balloon? alien abduction? hot air balloon?)... but I can't place what it feels like because the choir never goes away long enough. There's also a brief "spiraling down" bit without the choir which would be great if... I could actually listen to it for more than four seconds. I'm afraid the vocalizations here are a complete miss and while I definitely don't hate it--I can't really hate something that features sections I want more of--this track is probably a cinch for last place this time around. Though we've certainly had worse and managing to beat 783 other songs for last place is an honor in its own right.

*one minute later*

...Well, actually there's a song I don't have anything nice to say about, so I guess this track isn't actually in last place. Uhh... your call if that's an improvement or not?]

===================