Songs ruined by out-of-tune vocals

What otherwise nice songs have distracting off-key singing?

I think this is a really good example, this song is always played on oldies stations, but the singing sounds like a bad American Idol audition, especially the verses

 

Girl from the North Country
All I Really Want to Do

 

Ruined, you say? You may want to plug your ears. Or don't and instead bask in the glory of:

Gloria Balsam - "Fluffy"

 

"Atmosphere" by Joy Division. No complete ruining going on, though - I love the song, but still cringe a bit when Ian Curtis' pitch goes wobbly or flat during the first couple of verses.

 

Grand Funk Railroad - Get it Together

This song would’ve been a wicked nice instrumental piece, except Mark Farner and whoever else is singing with him (sounds like female singers, doesn’t sound like the rest of Grand Funk) start singing “GOT TO GET IT TOGETHERRRR!!” horribly out of tune at the very end of the song and render it into a complete joke. Whenever I listen to this song I change it immediately when the cacophony of singing starts. The same goes for the end of Some Kind of Wonderful, the “MY BABYY MY BABYY YEAHH YEAHH YEAHH!!” part. Absolutely atrocious.

 

Okay, she's not pitch perfect but by the standards of the day it's okay and I don't know why you've singled this out as being particularly out of tune. In the 60's this was a perfectly acceptable vocal with regard to pitch.

There's a lot worse!

 

Yeah, “ruined” is too strong a term, especially if the off-key bits are only occasional as opposed to throughout the song.

My go-to example has always been the end of the bridge in The Shirelles’ “Tonight’s the Night” (“fall apart”). It’s always amazed me that this passage was left in and they couldn’t be bothered to record another vocal.

 

Yeah, because "good" singing = what American Idol judges think is good singing.

 

I would have to go through some songs to pick specific examples, but I often wonder if anyone has pointed out that — though his voice can be wonderfully expressive — there are many occasions on which Smokey Robinson is perilously off-pitch.

 

Every Lou Reed song?

 

Red hot chili peppers - Under the bridge

 

Jonathan Richman is totally exempt from this thread!

 

Coy, vulnerable, plaintive, I've always loved this performance.

 

And sounds glorious at the same time.

 

I won't say that the songs were ruined but it baffles me that such, eh, "quality control" was repeatedly applied to the vocal production on Shirelles records.

Check out "THIS is the moment" at 1:47.

 

Not ruined exactly...

 

Lol, I'm playing this and it's making my cat go crazy. She's circling the laptop and scratching at the speakers.

 

Not ruined in the least.

 

The opening line in the studio version of “Thirty Years” by UK.
It’s a great epic tune that almost gets derailed before it even starts.

 

I like the general out-of-tune-ness of shoegaze vocals, like on Ride. It's not about the 'beauty' of the vocal, it's about the emotion of the songs. Besides which in shoegaze the beauty comes from all that distortion.

 

Which part?

 

Maybe your cat knows Fluffy and wants to help him find Gloria!

 

Of course, no matter who sang it, the song would be a ruin.

 

On many Dead live recordings "Pigpen" gets a little off key, but I usually enjoy him just the same. The off-kilter harmonies on other songs bother me more.

 

The original stereo version of She’s Leaving Home by The Beatles.
Not ruined, but it’s hard to listen to after hearing the correct version.