Mezzanine, and other supposedly great albums that are actually really f**king boring

4th May 2023

HAVE you been told an album is a classic only to find it’s incredibly tedious? It was probably one of these:

Mezzanine, Massive Attack

After two excellent albums of intense mumbling and beautiful singing, Bristolian trip-hoppers Massive Attack released a third which went so hard on the mumbling that it stopped being intense and became dull. Teardrop is a gorgeous song, but ‘mumble-hop’ never caught on as a genre, strangely.

Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd

It might be mind-expanding psychedelic rock, but that doesn’t stop it being boring. The songs are way too long, the lyrics are either obvious or don’t make sense, the cash till ringing at the start of Money reminds you of Are You Being Served? and eventually even the biggest fan is hoping that woman will shut up on The Great Gig in the Sky. By the end you may well feel you’ve been ‘hanging on in quiet desperation’, so it’s definitely an immersive experience.

(What’s The Story) Morning Glory, Oasis

After the huge success of Definitely Maybe, Oasis’ second album was meant to be one of the best of all time. However, it just sounds like they’re plagiarising their own work, and also unfortunately inflicted the misery of Wonderwall on the world. It still hasn’t gone away almost 30 years later, like a recurring fungal infection.

Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles

Dissing The Beatles? Sacrilege! But let’s be honest, this is their most overrated album, chock full of lumpen, plodding songs, plus some annoyingly chirpy ones, not to mention the aural crime scene which is When I’m Sixty-Four. Just listen to A Day In The Life and let yourself off the hook with the rest. Or just stick on Revolver instead in the first place, because that’s actually their best album, as any self-respecting Mojo-reading wanker knows.

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Some cracking songs on here, but it’s excessively long so there’s an awful lot of filler. However, what makes this a deeply tedious listen are the recordings of a teacher talking to a class of children inserted between each track. Nobody wants to know a kid’s opinion on the subject of love, they just want to listen to Doo Wop (That Thing), for Christ’s sake.

How to spot a former Tory voter who'd prefer someone more fascist

4th May 2023

MANY people won’t be voting Conservative again today. You agree with their decision, until it emerges that they’re only annoyed with the Tories for not being right-wing enough. Here are the warning signs.

At first they sound totally reasonable

They’ll say things like: ‘The Tories haven’t done anything for ordinary people.’ And you think: ‘Yes, levelling up was bollocks and public services desperately need investment.’ But actually they mean the Tories should have brought back hanging, cut all benefits to £0 a week and deported anyone who isn’t ‘Brilliant White’ on the Dulux colour chart.

You’ll praise them prematurely for changing their minds

It takes a big man, or woman, to admit they were wrong. As you prepare to applaud their humility, you’ll discover they don’t regret voting Conservative, just that the Tories haven’t got an effective leader like, say, Adolf Hitler.

They haven’t voted Labour or Lib Dem instead

Rather unfairly, voters use local elections to register disapproval of parties at a national level. So when a former Tory confirms they’ve voted differently this time, it’s easy to assume they’ve opted for Labour or the Lib Dems. They won’t have. They’ll have voted for the most right-wing candidate on the voting form, whether it’s Reform UK, Britain First or a lone nutter claiming to be ‘The Anti-Woke Common Sense and Rights for Whites Party’.

Wait for immigration to come up

It won’t take long. About five seconds after they’ve said the government needs to sort out the immigration system, they’ll be ranting about how the Royal Navy should sink dinghies coming to Dover with torpedoes and machine gun the survivors in the water. It’s all totally ridiculous and mental, but at least they’ve cleared up any confusion.

They still f**king adore Brexit

If a former Tory says ‘Brexit is a total mess’ they don’t mean Brexit was a bad idea – they mean our negotiators didn’t magically ‘get a good deal’ (they can’t explain what that is) and make all the Brexit promises come true. In their eyes Brexit is only a complete f**king disaster because of the EU, Guardian readers and the Devil in human form, Gary Lineker.

Don’t expect any form of consistency

They’ll say they don’t like Rishi Sunak because he’s rich. If you point out that, while not in the same league, Boris Johnson was rich, as are most Tory MPs, they’ll rapidly get bored with applying logic. Eventually they’ll admit they just want a leader who hates Muslims and sends in the riot police to beat hippyish middle-class protesters unconscious.

They don’t give a shit about actual Tory incompetence

Examples of Tory incompetence abound – f**k-ups like PPE procurement during Covid; Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s economic lunacy; or Britain’s polluting water companies, which prove they can’t or won’t regulate to solve a relatively simple problem. However the former Tory voter’s definition of incompetence is: ‘There’s a benefits family on my daughter’s street who bought their son a new pair of trainers. Why aren’t they stopping that?’