Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" is Bullshit

In a catalog of gems, this one...just isn't.

I owed you a short one. This is short.

Look, I like a lot of Bob Seger songs. He's written and recorded some sublime tunes, like "Turn the Page," "Against the Wind," "Night Moves," and "Main Street." But man, I find "Old Time Rock and Roll" to be just unlistenable trash.

I don't listen to regular FM radio very often but it seems like every time I do, that damn song comes on. I get irrationally angry at both Seger for recording that dreck and at Tom Cruise for popularizing it in Risky Business, even though Cruise probably had nothing to do with its inclusion in the film. Cruise should have demanded a better song. He's an enabler.

Just the sound of that piano intro sends me scrambling to hit the radio button. I don't know what it is about it, but the piano tone sounds off, the lyrics are dumb, it's repetitive as hell, and I don't like the way Seger sings it. Hey, kudos to the man for making tons of coin off of it, but it's the musical equivalent of a Burger King Whopper Jr. Not even a full Whopper, mind you, a fucking Whopper Jr.!

The third song on Seger's Stranger in Town album, it's an automatic skip on a record that includes amazing songs like "Still the Same," "Till it Shines," and "We've Got Tonight" (the version with way more balls than the Kenny Rogers/Sheena Easton version), and other decent tracks like "Hollywood Nights."

When they used to play the song at the Roll-A-Way in Newark, I remember singing alternate lyrics to it with Chris McKee and Ken Cooper as we skated around hating this filler-track-turned-hit. What a waste of  The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which plays on the track. According to the song's Wikipedia entry (I know, I know) Seger's regular backing band, the Silver Bullet Band, didn't like the song until it started getting big audience reactions. If they indeed thought it doesn't sound very "Silver Bullety," they are correct. 

Seger didn't even write it. George Jackson and Thomas Earl Jones III are the official writers, although Seger later said he only kept the chorus and rewrote all the verses but didn't take a writing credit. Jackson disputes Seger's claim, but these guys should each be fighting by saying the other guy wrote it, because it's bad. It made a lot of money, but it's bad. I'm sorry if you like it, but you like a bad song. That's OK. I like lots of bad songs too, many of them by Kiss. Just don't kid yourself about it.

"Old Time Rock and Roll" is bullshit.