Train has always been the worst band. How have they survived all this time?
I believe I've presented ample evidence that Hefty is at least partly to blame.
I like "One Headlight".
Isn't that interesting?
I frequently listened to "One Headlight" on the way to the Claim Jumper.
.. I reach for my gun.
Or maybe sigh, put more tea water on, and wonder about tomorrow, with a decent act in the background, like Eno or Rasputina.
I like the idea that Stanley is a professional lover.
@11 why is that interesting?
Immersive music.
Just curious.
This song definitely sounds more like "One Headlight" than the other one, but it's way worse than either.
Comment 1 echoes my thoughts on watching this video. How has this terrible band managed to get near-constant radio play for the past fifteen years?
I can't explain the appeal of Train (though, honestly, they don't seem any worse than the million other bands who sound like them), but the woman in the video sure has pretty hair.
Bloody hell, that's awful. Some shit ska-lite acoustic guitar, crap soft-rock chorus, beyond-boring drum programming, singer who looks like someone's dad. It's like an Eastern European pop song from 10-15 years ago.
In fact, there's probably some general rule of shitness you can derive just from the presence of that plodding skank guitar rhythm.
That romantic time at the winery when you took me in the cellar and gave me a glass of wine! And then I slept over, but we kept our shirts on. And I really really liked you, so I left before you woke up.
What a schmuck!
19: He had to go show his car for a product-placement. It's complicated!
though, honestly, they don't seem any worse than the million other bands who sound like them
That is no excuse. I'm reminded of a band that was around the pubs I drank in when I was a kid which had to change their name after every gig because nobody would book them twice.
How has this terrible band managed to get near-constant radio play for the past fifteen years?
This is not the kind of phenomenon that requires explanation. You need an explanation when a good band gets on the radio. What you describe is just the default scenario.
Knew/Déjà vu/true is a really weak rhyme, especially since he has to work in an irrelevant detail (its a street he knew) to get one of the words in there. The fact that its a triple rhyme makes it even worse. He's like calling attention to how weak the rhymes are.
"Looking for a two-ply/ Hefty bad strong enough to hold my love" works well if you read it as a complaint about how hard it is to find condoms in his size.
Nia really likes this song. "My love for you went viral" is my favorite worst line, in part because of the STI implications. I agree with helpy-chalk about the Hefty bag, too.
Also the "Oh, I swear 2 you / I'll be there 4 you" is something he stole from some middle schooler's yearbook. The whole song is icky.
I'm reminded of a band that was around the pubs I drank in when I was a kid which had to change their name after every gig because nobody would book them twice.
Jethro Tull?
Speaking of lyrics, I think I asked this before, but I've got a funny lyric with a scientific subject, and I'd like to get it published in a major journal. Any thoughts about how to accomplish that? Didn't the NEJM used to have a humor issue?
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I need to train someone to travel on a plane (one way international flight) who has not flown since the 70's. Are there videos of how to get through airport security?
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Confirming my prejudices about the Grammys being the lamest industry award in the history of industry, Wikipedia tells me that Train has received 8 (count 'em: EIGHT) Grammy nominations and 3 wins.
28. No. Jethro Tull had a residency in a small but important club in the West End of London, where they played straight up blues, and were excellent. Shame what happened to them.
As far as industry awards go, I guess Train has been a big success for the industry, so who else should get the awards?
Now, if the Grammy were to be considered as an ENTERTAINMENT award or a musical honor, they would be astoundingly inadequate.
I heard this on the radio the other day, and had no idea it was Train. (I didn't really like it much, but I did find it ear-wormy.) Considering that I *cough* actually owned their first album and thus am a little too familiar with their works, I find this to be a really weird re-invention for them. (Though I think they did that with the last album, too...)
It sounds most like Train ca. "Drops of Jupiter" put through whatever Leann Rimes meets Carly Rae Jepsen filter they're using for pop songs these days. IOW, awful.
Actually, I quite like Jethro Tull (up through the 1970s, anyway).
I thought Train reinvented themselves to be more poppy with "Save Me San Francisco". Now they've done it AGAIN?
This doesn't apply to Train, who have been consistently popular for a decade, but one of the saddest spectacles is the band that's had several successes, then some failures, and desperately tries to have one more by FINALLY deciding to sell out and become all poppy and Californian.
1. Better Than Ezra, "Juicy"
2. Collective Soul, "Hollywood"
Train once did an appearance on the Howard Stern show where they played an acoustic version of "Drops of Jupiter" that surprised me by sounding very good. I think they also did a version of the Beetlejuice song that was good.
I realize that this is kind of a self-refuting comment.
This is the sort of thread that re-reminds me that I have no taste. My kids listen to Train (or used to -- they seem to have stopped) and it never seemed noticeably worse than anything else. It's really that bad?
40: I'm obviously not in a position to be making any serious judgments about the quality of music, but I don't think it's that Train is exceptionally bad, just that most radio pop is pretty terrible and they're a typical example of it. What I find weird about Train specifically is their longevity; their songs are very typical of one-hit-wonder radio hits, but they're had like ten of them and have been going strong for over a decade. I do find them more annoying than average because their lyrics are so dumb.
I don't think they're a typical example of radio pop at all. In fact the opposite - top 40 radio these days plays about one song every two hours by people with guitars, and the fact that it's this bunch of schmoes who have reached that level of success is just maddening to some people.
I don't think they're a typical example of radio pop at all.
They're typical of radio pop circa 2001, when everybody sounded like the Semi-Charmed Kind of Life guys or Matchbox 20 or Sugar Ray or et cetera. But I hear you, LB: they just sound blandly generic to me.
I didn't find them terrible (obviously, given that I admitted to buying an album) in the early 2000's, but it was somewhere after Drops of Jupiter and the fame that they found that I thought they really went downhill. "Save Me San Francisco" (which I thought still sounded recognizably "Train" and yet was definitely a departure, per Ned's comment) was particularly annoying to me.
I will say that they've always had terrible rhyming lyrics that made no sense (ie, the first big hit - "Meet Virginia"). It just used to be more charming, somehow.
3: I begin a shocking proportion of sentences in non-formal writing with "so." When I am paying attention, I go back an edit about 2/3 of them out.
Just read that Train has lashed out at a New Zealand website that used one of their songs in a campaign opposing marriage equality when they strongly support it. So that was nice of them, I guess.