Worst/most jarringly obvious edits in songs?

"Sing Me Your Song" by Mark Gormley - that songwriter whose green-screen-heavy music videos became an Internet phenomenon - has an edit on the CD version that nearly reaches Godley and Crème-level bad. A chorus starts, then suddenly at a random spot, it crossfades to the beginning of another take of the same chorus. No attempt whatsoever to hide it.

In the music video (at 2:45), there is a clumsy attempt to fix it; noticeable, but considerably better than how it sounds on his CD.

 

Hotel California just before 'mirrors on the ceiling'

 

The whole thing was a pastiche of that style. Great track.

I've actually found most Motown editing to be excellently done. However, Holland Dozier Holland's Hot Wax and Invictus labels generated many classically bad edits wherein one often got the sense, for instance, that they created a song but wrote and recorded the intro later and then spliced it on. Sometimes, there'd also be a noticeable pitch change before the last verse of a track, and those always sound bad. "Somebody's Been Sleeping" by 100 Proof, "Deeper and Deeper" by Freda Payne, and "Only Time Will Tell" by General Johnson are all victims of Invictus / Hot Wax edits. In terms of being bad edits, they're certainly invictus!

Putting those to one side, the long sax solo in "She's Gone" by Hall and Oates becomes a single sustained note on the single, compounded by what sounds like someone squeezing the saxophonist's nose part-way through. (That's the edit.)

 

By the way, has anyone mentioned the long version of "Crimson and Clover" yet?

 

I honestly can't say I've heard a copy of that where the pitch goes flat in the guitar solo... maybe I just got lucky when I heard it online? *shrug*

 

I don't know how they COULD clean it up - the instrumentation and mix completely changes, and John's voice suddenly becomes unnaturally deep.

 

It's been a while since I heard it, but I remember the extended mix of "If I Can't Have You" from the Saturday Night Fever promo LP having an embarrassingly bad splice that obviously happens on the wrong beat.

 

I Am The Walrus, all stereo LP releases about half way through

 

"Who Loves The Sun" by The Velvet Underground . . . I've gotten used to it over time, but it used to really snap me out of it every time.

huh. I always thought that was Lou just saying it twice in a row . . . he tended to do that . . . Jim-Jims and such . . .

 

...Seriously, has *no one* in this thread mentioned "Black Betty"? That song has at least *two* awful edits - the most glaring being the completely out of place jump back to the intro after the first verse.

The edit in the middle of "It Don't Come Easy" is a big one too, especially if you've heard a version (particularly George's demo) with the removed instrumental break intact. The edit to "Got to pay your dues..." is VERY jarring.

 

I enjoy that. It's like Lennon has gotten even further out of it.

 

The radio edit of Toni Braxton's "Suddenly" has a rather ungraceful edit at @3:07-3:09. She's in the middle of a long stream of notes which just get cut off and then it picks up in the middle of another line. If the sound was clearer on this vid it would be much more obvious.

 

I mentioned this one about a year ago, somebody finally put it up on Youtube..
Pink Floyd 'Time' , with most of the solo hacked out, and the beginning grafted onto the end...

 

The motherload. I have no idea how many different performances this was patched together from, and I don't want to.

 

We could spend a day on "Good Vibrations" alone, mainly because it was recorded in like 750 million sections. I love it tho.

 

The Byrds - Chestnut Mare
The original 45rpm single available in 1971 edited out the 'trippy' interlude found on the full '5 mins plus' version that I finally got to hear many years later. Probably a wise decision as it was a sizeable hit here in the UK and I don't think it would have been played on radio otherwise - but it is a dreadfully unsubtle and brutal edit! (unfortunately, I can't find it on youtube so I can't exhibit my point )

 

The recording released by Ram Jam is actually from one of Bill Bartlett's earlier bands, Starstruck, and for some unknown reason he edited it heavily for the Ram Jam release and it's painfully obvious. I'm guessing the original wasn't recorded to a click track, and then was edited very poorly which only compounded the problem.

Until I heard the original unedited version the song really confused me!

The original version (which used to be on YouTube, but I see is now gone) flows smoothly from beginning to end, and the actual order of the parts of the song make much more sense. It's the only version I listen to now, unfortunately I lifted it from YouTube so the quality isn't that great.

 

More Hot Wax hacking can be found on Honey Cone's two biggest hits: "Stick Up" and "Want Ads". There are several versions of each song in varying lengths, all of them edited together by a person with a blunt instrument who was obviously hard of hearing.

 

Fun thread.

It can be difficult to hide edits in so-called classical music and opera. Here's one from the world of opera: Verdi's La Traviata conducted by Carlos Kleiber with Placido Domingo. Someone actually went to the trouble of highlighting the part I found so jarring years ago when I first heard it. The splice between 2:03 and 2:04 in this clip.

 

Beatles BABY'S IN BLACK: in the middle of the second chorus, a sloppy/off-speed guitar overdub with different eq just seems to "float in"; all the while, you can hear talking in the background (mainly right channel).

 

The crappy 7" Edits on Prince 4Ever. Let's Go Crazy is so bad... 1999 chops off the signature intro and When Doves Cry omits the epic guitar solo ending

 

Elvis Costello, Oliver's Army - it's impossible to sing the last line of the first verse into the chorus in real time.

 

Kate Bus's song Pi from Aerial cuts a chunk of digits out of the universal constant.

 

Stupid, stupid autocorrect. I obviously meant Kate Bush. She cut a segment of digits out of pi. The missing numbers are: 9986280348253421170679

You're welcome.