Biggest pet peeve in music

Depends on the band though. Live videos of the Mountain Goats are worth watching for the chat, but also they play a lot of songs live that are never released, or they play them in radically different versions (solo acoustic vs full band, keyboards vs guitars) that it’s worth hearing even a shaky mobile version. (But your point generally stands).

Lo-Fi spelled as “Low Fi”

Shoegaze referred to as “Shoegazing” of spelled as “Shoe-gaze.” The former is anachronistic, the latter makes me think Mr. Burns is talking.

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Affected vocals are one of my greatest bugbears. Particularly people trying to sound like Amy Winehouse or Alex Turner.

When the Fratellis released their first single, I couldn’t understand for the life of me why the singer was Glaswegian but appeared to be doing an impression of George Formby.

Going “Uh oh oh oh oh oh oh” instead of writing the last line of a chorus.

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Hip-Hop

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There was someone at the gig I went to the other night where the guy next to me had setlist.fm open on their previous night’s set. :unamused:

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Well now I’m angry. Two setlist peeves:

  1. People finding out beforehand what it’ll be. Where’s the fun in that?
  2. People getting annoyed when a band doesn’t play a certain song. Can you imagine playing the same songs every night for a long tour? You’d lose your mind.

Enjoy the band. Enjoy the surprise of which song they play next.

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I guess he couldn’t be holding his phone aloft for over an hour, so setlist.fm was helping him be more selective with his tedious filming activities perhaps. :wink:

That and you would want to limit the element of surprise as far as possible!

Spoken word interludes are ace

Those high pitched, not quite falsetto, slightly out of the singer’s natural range vocals that 90% of British supposedly ‘alternative’ bands have used for the last 10 years. Alt J are the most heinous example but there are lots of others.

I think Thom Yorke started it and Chris Martin followed close behind.

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It’s kind of the opposite of Nico, who sometimes sounds like she’s having to pull a very odd face to get those low notes.

THIS!!!

At Johnny Marr show in Montreal:

Me, ‘i hope he plays There is a Light That Never Goes Out.’
Friend (on setlist.com), ‘yeah. He closes with it.’

Gah!!

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Songs which have ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ in the lyrics. Can’t even make an exception for the Velvet Underground. Just makes me cringe.

Not a fan of comedy voices (I’ll let The Kinks off but I’m pretty sure they are the only exception) or (as previously mentioned) affected voices. On this, isn’t Amy Whinehouse one of the prime culprits? I mean she’s just doing a bad Billie Holiday impression - more fun to listen to David Sedaris doing his impression.

It is annoying when people dismiss whole genres of music as though they have listened to say every jazz record ever made. But I can’t really get angry about that - it’s just people being people.

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SSP

When bands talk about the new album they’ve just recorded being a massive departure from their sound of the last record, normally means it sounds just the same but shitter.

Hello Bloc Party

Either that or the major label they signed to after their early hype insisted that they change their sound to suit the market they want them to appeal to.

Hello Klaxons

Linked slightly to this - big acts headlining several festivals and playing the exact same songs in the same order. Not sure if it’s linked up to their “light show” or whatever so that they have to start and finish in time and in order.

Last year I inadvertently spoiled New Order’s headline set at Latitude for myself by watching it at Glastonbury on TV three weeks earlier. It just wasn’t a surprise to hear Blue Monday and Love Will Tear Us Apart in the encore.

100% right on both of these. Back in 2007 I saw Built to Spill and after the show Doug came out to talk to and sign things for the fans - someone actually went up to him and said, “You know, it was a pretty good show, but I’m disappointed that you didn’t play Cortez the Killer, it would have improved it.” It still makes me cringe thinking about it.

Saw Radiohead at South Park in Oxford in…2001? Amazing day. Two local bands, then Humphrey Lyttleton’s Big Band, Sigur Ros, an acoustic set from Beck, Supergrass, then Radiohead for three hours. Three encores. Decent spread of tracks from the history to date. I think it was also the first time they’d played Creep in 10 years or something.

My mate Johnny moaned all the way home that they didn’t play Just. Arsehole.

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  1. We’ve written 200 songs for the new album. No you haven’t.
  2. Singers getting off the stage and going into the crowd.
  3. People losing their shit about singers getting off the stage and going into the crowd.

Re 2 & 3; its the equivalent of pretending to walk off a panel show, in order to get a round of applause from morons.

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  1. Bands at poorly attended shows asking the crowd to come forward. Fuck off, I’ll stand where I want. Don’t make me feel bad for coming to your show and standing in a position that doesn’t suit you.
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