Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Harum

You know this song from the unmistakable tinny keyboard intro, and from there on in it's just total trippy nonsense. It's one of those tracks that probably evokes huge nostalgic feeling in people who were young at the time (and who were smoking almost as pot as the Harum surely were themselves), but it has dated almost as badly as Miami Vice and Hi-Karate. Maybe it's because I've heard 'Whiter Shade of Pale' so many times that I dislike it so much, or maybe it's just because the lyrics are so irritating if you're sober. It plays out like a bad nightmare, one of those ones where everything is out of sync and becomes more and more bizarre as you progress through the horror. Actually, reading the lyrics, I can't even remember the last two verses - perhaps these were cut from the single version because it was already too overblown and pretentious. "Come on, lads," the engineer said to the wannabe prog-rockers, "Does anyone actually listen to this bobbins?" Whenever I think of this song I also think about 'Nights in White Satin' by The Moody Blues, which is similarly pompous, and which will no doubt feature in this blog before too long. My fiance and I had a discussion about which track is worse - he picked Justin Hayward and his gang, and I went for this, but it's a tough call.

Crap lyrics: "She said, 'There is no reason and the truth is plain to see.'/But I wandered through my playing cards and would not let her be"

Verdict: Numerous shades of crap.