"I don't know about you bastards, but I've grown at least five years fucking older during that song."
— Dave King of Flogging Molly, following a 12-minute-long live version of "Black Friday Rule"
Lest you think that all of the big winners in the Bad Song Survey were lightweight, simpering, and/or pretentious pop songs, please note that there was also a heavy vote for the heavy-metal Iron Butterfly classic, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". A lot of people wonder what the strange-sounding title of this song means. It means "This Song Is WAY Too Long."
I think a number of rock classics fall into this category. For example—and I know I'm going to get into serious trouble with the Led Zeppelin people for this, but I need to get it off my chest—I sincerely believe that "Stairway to Heaven" would be a much better song if they cut maybe 45 minutes out of it.note I also feel this way about "Layla" by Eric Clapton (both versions), "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, "American Pie" by Don McLean, "Taxi" by Harry Chapin, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procul Harum, "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd, and of course, "Hey Jude" by the Beatles, some of whom are still singing the na-na-na part.
I know these are great rock classics; I'm just saying that after a while they get to be great boring rock classics whose primary musical value seems to be that they give radio DJs time to go to the bathroom.
— Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs
It's not about showing off how well you can play your instrument—if you want that, you need Power Metal, a genre composed almost entirely of hairspray addicted middle aged men who can't tell their guitars apart from their penises, and masturbate with both constantly.
— Particle Fiction, David
"For The" Wynne on metal
"For The" Wynne on metal"Bender, that was the best forty-minute washboard solo I've ever heard. The parts where I was awake blew my mind."
I know this song is twenty minutes long,
I know this song is fucking long!
I know this song is fucking long!
— The Clash, "The Magnificent Seven", Live in Boston, Sept 7, 1982
Really don't mind if you sit this one out
— Jethro Tull, the first words to the 50-minute-long song "Thick as a Brick"
Manager: It goes on forever! Six bloody minutes!
Freddie Mercury: I pity your wife if you think six minutes is forever.
Freddie Mercury: I pity your wife if you think six minutes is forever.
Life is too fucking short to play or hear Free Bird!
— Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse on this trope.
I've been singing this song now for twenty-five minutes. I could sing it for another twenty-five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired....
— Arlo Guthrie, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree"
Sometimes the riff is just so fucking good that you just want to hear it over and over and over again... sometimes for 52 minutes!
— J. Bennett of Decibel Magazine, on Sleep's Dopesmoker
Not one short, or even medium-length song, except for one blessedly tight two-minuter right at the end. note This isn't new, exactly. They've recorded songs like this before - "Champagne Supernova" was eight minutes; "Rock 'n' Roll Star" spends its last two minutes just blasting away. But it's one thing to do it on one great song on a classic album and another to expect your fans to have spend seven minutes listening to something called "Magic Pie".
— Todd in the Shadows on the track listing for Be Here Now
It's eight minutes long and it feels like eight days. Like, yeah, their classic songs like "Master of Puppets" were long, too, but "Master of Puppets" had parts! [...] It had a new hook every couple minutes. This song has zero hooks, so there's zero reason for it to be this long! There's zero reason for the album to be this long! 75 minutes?! You couldn't make any cuts?! "Purify" had to be heard?!
— Todd in the Shadows on "Some Kind of Monster" from Metallica's St Anger
